© 2006 M. Bennett Hooper
We met quite coincidently in the doctors office this morning which was usually not a treat. People lined the waiting room in various states of medicated gloom as they waited for the their turn with Dr. Khan. A vibrant older woman sat across the aisle from us smiling as she began to tease two younger Black men about their bald heads. She said she meant no harm but they didn’t have much hair before they trimmed it all off because she could tell. she proceeded to go around the room diagnosing the various stages of male patients hair or lack of it. She informed us of the practice of balding white men who allowed the back and sides to grow and then tried to swoop it forward.
Everyone laughed which only fired her antics even more. Suddenly there wasn’t a sullen look in the room. More people laughed louder and offered their own comments. She said her name was Thelma and she was the only living person left in her immediate family and she had lost a child who had grown to adulthood but she prayed a lot and decided to put all of her burdens in the hands of God. She said that she refused to be burdened and worked on her personal happiness daily. I told her that was admirable as we shared senior year experiences..
We discussed marriage and she told us of a neighbor who had been married for 60 years and bragged that they never had a cross word to say to each other. She shrugged in disbelief and added that if a couple never argued and agreed about everything someone was lying. I told her that in our younger years my husband would start arguments because he informed me we should have them and it wasn’t normal to not argue. He added he would start them on purpose. I told the listeners that I would only say the subject is closed and he would say I couldn’t close the subject. I retorted by saying well I just ignored you as you talked to the wall. We all laughed.
She further stated that after moving away from the neighborhood she ran into the older woman and asked her how her husband was doing. The older woman told her that she got rid of him after 60 years and the younger man accompanying her was her new husband. A few weeks after that meeting she ran into the old man and pretending not to know about the breakup asked him about the old lady. He said he had to get rid of her because she was the world’s biggest liar and the younger woman accompanying him was his new wife. He further told Ms. Thelma that the only reason he always said that’s right when he first wife said anything was he didn’t want to have to kill her because he disagreed with anything she said.
Dr. Thelma was giving us all a laughter filled morning as we waited for the doctor. I told the nurse calling in patients to be examined that Ms. Thelma was terrorizing the patients.
Ms. Thelma told us about a church member whose husband hung out in the streets for years who called a fellow member and lamented that she couldn’t take it anymore. Member number two told her that when the errant husband returned home she should just kill him. The next morning church member number one called member number two and told her I did it. “Did what?” the surprised member exclaimed. “I killed him just like you told me and the undertaker is coming over to get him.” After convulsing with laughter I informed Ms. Thelma that the moral of her story was to never get domestic advice from church members.
MS. Thelma received her doctorate that morning by alleviating the pain of many patients who entered the exam rooms with smiles on their faces. My husband a recovering cancer patient and I were among them. Dr. Thelma and I exchanged phone numbers and agreed to keep in touch. Smiling to myself I knew she had many more stories which would inspire me to write them.
