Wednesday, February 15, 2012

As background for this story, you need to know that there aren't many people I genuinely like

Usually, I un-like someone over something pretty basic like wearing Crocs in public, liking Sarah Palin (unironically), or considering the "Twilight" books "literature". Shallow, yes, but it usually saves me the troube of getting to know someone and then discovering even bigger character flaws.

The thing is, I need to be the one doing the un-liking. It's just how I am. When someone seemingly arbitrarily doesn't like me at first, it's a problem, and it becomes my goal in life to make that person like me (or at least not dislike me).

So when my neurosurgeon didn't crack a single smile* during my first appointment with him, I was troubled.

The day I had my surgery, I was a little busy being sliced open to try to befriend him, so I had to wait until today to win him over.

After an unreasonably long time in the waiting room and then the exam room, he ambles on in to ask how I'm doing.

I show him how flexible and workable my formerly dead foot is, I flash my adequately healing incision and I obsequiously flatter his mad surgical skillz and, like magic, the dude lightens up and smiles and is friendly(ish)

Then as he's going on about how amazing my recovery is going, he offhandedly says "you know, I didn't want to say it before, but most people with the amount of nerve damage you had aren't able to walk correctly ever again."

I didn't want to say it before.


I didn't want to say it before.

I didn't want to say it before.

Okay, I'm a huge fan of avoiding stuff, but that's not part of my job. You know what I didn't want to say before? That you're kind of a dick***.




*it has since been confirmed that... he's just like that. He's got no bedside manner and he's not a chatty guy - even if you get to know him better**.

** at the end of the day, it wasn't a huge deal to me - I wasn't going to start a book club with the dude, I just needed him to be good at his job 

*** but seriously, thanks for being awesome at the part of your job that happened when I was anesthetized.