Smoke and mirrors

“If someone wants my bra, they can have it,” a woman in the waiting room announced.

I looked up. She’d been fussing with a set of lockers where those of us waiting for mammograms had been instructed to put our clothes and personal items, and she’d given up. “I can’t figure out how to lock it, so I’m just leaving it wide open,” she declared.

This week I had three medical appointments. All of them were routine, but I was royally stressed out the entire week.

Don’t get me wrong. Medical issues don’t scare me, I have a fairly high pain tolerance, and I’m not unduly fazed by the physical vagaries of aging. But appointments these days require the ability to navigate technology, rapid-fire instructions, mazelike offices, and complicated parking lots. Those are the things that scare me.

As I often joke, if someone were to tell me, “Paula, you have three months to live, and during that time you’re going to go through multiple rounds of traumatic medical treatments,” my response would be, “Well, that’s fine, but oh my God, WHERE AM I GOING TO PARK?”

Appointments involve, for me, a host of challenging and frightening steps. First, as a “pre-check-in,” I’m asked to fill out lengthy online questionnaires that, for reasons unknown, I then have to repeat when I get to the office. These involve recalling the dates of my childhood surgeries, all of my relatives’ health issues, and the exact day my period stopped. I don’t remember any of that.

(A few months ago I panicked at a questionnaire and forgot my address. Moments like that are particularly alarming to me because my father, his only sibling, and his mother all died of Alzheimer’s. It’s constantly on my mind – so much so that I participate in an ongoing UC San Francisco study called the Brain Health Registry, in which every few months I take mental acuity tests and answer other questions about my lifestyle including diet, alcohol use, social life, etc. I was asked to designate a “study partner,” and I chose Julie, of course, who herself participates by answering questions about me every six months. Despite my existential dread she continues to insist that, while I remain convinced that I’m slowly losing my mind, in actual fact I haven’t shown clear-cut evidence of that. “No,” she repeats every time I nag about it, “I’m reporting to UCSF that as of today, at least, you still seem to have all your marbles.”)

The day before the appointment I need to remember whether I am allowed to eat, drink, take my statin, or wear deodorant. So I post signs to myself around the house in enormous black Sharpie lettering.

Then comes the horror of all urban horrors: I have to navigate my way to the offices (scattered all over the city) and decide where on earth I’m going to park and, more dauntingly, how the parking lot works when inevitably I can’t find a spot on the street.

(Last year, for one particular parking lot, I typed up a long Word document as soon as I got home, instructing my future self about how to use the payment machines because it nearly took a degree in advanced physics to figure them out. But when I arrived at the same lot recently, those machines were gone and new ones had taken their place, with even more complex instructions! Upon exit I flapped, twirled, and waved my ticket around in front of the “Scan Your Ticket” rectangle for a solid 10 minutes while cars waiting to leave were piling up behind me, until I gave up and slapped the ticket drunkenly near a different rectangle until the gate finally opened, prompting a roar of applause from the backed-up cars. Well, it wasn’t exactly applause, but that’s how I chose to imagine it.)

Needless to say, by the time I arrive at the office I am usually bathed in sweat and anxiety. (And yet they won’t let me wear deodorant!)

Once safely inside, I’m shuttled from one check-in line to another before being hustled down the hall by a 23-year-old auctioneer who barks instructions at all of us uncomprehending oldsters. When she’s done with her rapid-fire spiel I just want to cry out, “Huh?” But instead I’m fighting hard to remember which way the gown is supposed to face, which clothes I have to take off, where the lockers are, how they function, and in which direction I will need to head for the next room, where someone is inevitably waiting for me while snickering.

And do I keep my socks on? I never know the answer to that one.

After the appointment comes what is often my biggest challenge: finding my way out of the exam room through a labyrinthine tangle of hallways back to the waiting room and out the door. Usually I circle the area, ask no fewer than 14 people how to get out of there, retrace my steps twice, and then accidentally find the exit. Once finally out the door, I breathe in a bracing gulp of San Francisco air, make a grateful sign of the cross, drive home, and immediately reward myself with a shot of liquor, time of day notwithstanding.

Anyway, back to Friday. There I was in the mammogram waiting room, puzzling over the locker situation and what to do with my clothes. There were about 16 lockers and eventually I chose locker number 4, successfully stuffing my belongs inside and locking the door on only the second try. Now, what else did I need to remember? Oh, yes – which locker was it??  “Number 4, number 4, don’t forget number 4,” I repeated silently. I was mastering this! (Unlike the hapless woman with the hanging bra.)

Except she wasn’t hapless. She was a tall, lithe, sophisticated woman 10 or 15 years my junior. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and I assumed that that evening she’d be doing an academic book reading in front of an appreciative highbrow audience.

The third woman in the waiting room was actually repeating “locker 6,” “locker 6,” “locker 6” out loud, and she looked to be cosmopolitan as well. She had the pampered skin of a successful woman who probably went to the spa on a weekly basis. I figured she had to hail from Marin County.

“By the way, did you figure out how to park?” I asked her.

“Oh, that’s the only thing I didn’t have to worry about. I walked here because I live in the Marina,” she said.

Well, I was close.

The elegant author lady piped up and said that she takes cell phone photos every time she parks anywhere. She photographs street signs, parking lot positions, the angle of her car, everything. Otherwise, she claimed, she’d be doomed.

The Marina lady then proceeded to tell us about the time she forgot her locker number when she was at Disneyland, of all places. Not only had she forgotten the number, but she’d forgotten the location of the entire building.

After a few minutes, all of us were comparing notes about our inanities. It began to dawn on me that perhaps I’m not the only person in the world who dreads going to medical offices, gas stations, salad bars, City Hall, and grocery checkout lines for fear of embarrassing myself. Perhaps I’m not singularly inept. Perhaps I’m not losing my head while everyone around me is keeping theirs.

We’re all human beings, aren’t we? Maybe we need to not be so self-critical. We’re all bozos on this bus.

“You know,” I told the author lady, “I always feel that I’m a bumbling fool while people like you seem to have it all together.”

“It’s all smoke and mirrors, my friend,” she answered. “All smoke and mirrors.”

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Due to popular demand, I am including, at the end of each blog post, the latest random diary entries that I’ve been posting on Facebook for “Throwback Thursday.” These are all taken absolutely verbatim from the lengthy diaries I kept between 1970 and 1987.

March 22, 1975 [age 19]:

“These two days have been both crazy and quiet, fun and disaster. [I was the maid of honor in my friend Robin’s wedding.] Friday night I drove down to Carmel with Robin and Guy. I’d had a small dinner at home, and we stopped in Gilroy to get some junk – cracker jacks, cookies, peanuts, pies, shoestring potatoes. But when we arrived they had dinner waiting for us! I could have puked! Lasagna, chicken, salad, and cheese pie. That night Robin rolled my hair and said she’d call me in the morning. Well, I woke from a dream at 6:30 a.m. thinking I was hearing a voice calling “Paula, PAULA!” and I rushed out into the hall like a fool, and no one was there. In the afternoon I took a long hot bath and I brought the shower curtain smashing down on my head. An hour before the wedding I was alone with Robin and her mother in the church dressing room where we beautified ourselves. I had my long royal blue dress on and a cross that Robin had given me and my hair tied back – I actually looked nicer than I’ve ever looked! I was nervous but managed to not flub up the ring-giving or the bouquet-passing. It was a short but moving ceremony that made me cry. At 8:00 I went upstairs to help get Robin ready to go, in the meanwhile going to the bathroom and discovering to my horror that the ties on my dress had been six inches submerged in the toilet.”

March 28, 1975 [age 19]:

“San Francisco again, this time with [my brother] Marc. We did an awful lot of driving around looking for parking lots. Also, on the way up there, we had an urge to suddenly turn off the freeway and look for a doughnut place proclaimed by Bruce Bishop to be heavenly. I liked the plain fried ones. In San Francisco we chased around City Lights and a few more record stores and bookstores and then went off to the Exploratorium. I wanted to go get lox and bagels afterwards, but Marc said he wasn’t hungry and couldn’t eat more than ‘one lock.’ That sent me into hysterics.”

April 2, 1975 [age 19]:

“Dr. Egbert [my allergist] informed me today that I have to start getting shots twice a week because I am allergic to dust, some trees, ragweed, bagweed, schmagweed, and every single kind of grass.”

April 3, 1975 [age 19]:

“The skies rained gray today and my [great aunt] Nella was buried. I was teary-eyed and wracked. I thought of all of our neglect of old people – damn damn damn we NEGLECT them so! I saw how our realities are so different – I’m hung up on Kerouac and the Byrds and I guzzle beer and write journals and they watch death grab their friends as they wearily dwell on remembrances.”

April 5, 1975 [age 19]:

“Coming out of Church tonight I saw [my friend and neighbor] Ted for a moment, and when I made as if to say goodbye he hesitated. Earlier during the Kiss of Peace I’d turned and seen him two rows behind, and I touched his hand with a smile big as the sky. So he hesitated outside and asked, ‘Why don’t we ever DO anything anymore?’ School, work, school, work. I want so much and try so hard to hold on to everyone but people go by the wayside sometimes. ‘Wait till summer,’ I promised, ‘just wait till summer.’ ”

April 9, 1975 [age 19]:

“Mom is having terrible trouble with her arm – they shot cortisone in her and took x-rays and still don’t know what it is. What if it’s cancer? Mom is the person I love the most in this world, and if she were to die I just couldn’t, I wouldn’t, I don’t even know, I couldn’t survive. I’d fall apart. I mean, I would be absolutely devastated if Dad or Marc or Janine died, of course, but Mom – I just couldn’t take it emotionally or physically. I pray every night that her smoking won’t cripple or blacken her lungs beyond repair.”

April 10, 1975 [age 19]:

“A couple of projects I’ve been working on lately: 1) Getting a BankAmericard. They sent me back a note saying that I had insufficient credit information to warrant their issuing me a card. Chevron had also rejected me. I turned to Mom in despair and asked how the heck I could ever START credit when they all say no because I haven’t started yet?! 2) Sending inquiries out to 13 firms recommended by the Library of Congress in search of Jack Kerouac’s spoken recordings. 3) Oh, yes, and getting rid of my athlete’s foot and my corn, succeeding only with the former.”

April 12, 1975 [age 19]:

“I saw three movies today in between a million other things. I had zwieback and coffee for breakfast, listened to a record for [my brother] Marc to see if there any scratches on it, cleaned the inside of my car, drove to the Pruneyard to see ‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’ (alternating between laughing and crying), which was a great movie but I almost hit a kid in the parking lot, came home, washed the outside of the car, looked through a book of poems and songs to get ideas for my journal, washed my hair, listened to one of my vacation cassettes, read Tom Wolfe, ate dinner, and went to church. Then Ted drove us all to Blossom Hill to see ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ and my very first complete X-rated movie, ‘Emmanuel.’ All night long I had second thoughts about seeing that one, especially because I’d be with four guys, but I really wanted to see ‘The Owl and the Pussycat,’ which was first, and I knew that if I were too grossed out by the X-movie I could leave and slink into another theater. But I didn’t leave. I might even see another one sometime.”

April 14, 1975 [age 19]:

“I accompanied Elba Galindez to Round Table Pizza today where we sat for an hour, jabbering. Elba was in my 2^nd period science class [where I was a high school teacher’s aide] before she transferred to Campbell High School, where she was so racially ostracized that she moved back into this area last week. Her tales of her short sojourn at the upperclass white school made me hate all the distrust in the world. But her stories about her life in New York, San Francisco, Puerto Rico, and San Jose were so interesting that I just sat there enthralled, popping a million questions at her. And what stories could I tell? What do I do besides read and write and work? What great places have I been to besides San Franciso only 50 miles away?”

April 15, 1975 [age 19]:

“These are my fantasies lately: [My friend and neighbor] Ted and I roaring across the country this summer in a big old bus like the Merry Pranksters had, painted vivid red and orange, eating all kinds of bulk cheap foods, playing cards, burning across the night in frenzied excitement, lying in one sleeping bag as we did at Clear Lake last year, me playing with his hair in the nighttime breeze, buzzing into the East on a warm sunny morning, drinking rum in a New York City bar, and ending back here in Frisco holding hands and eating chocolate down by the water.”

April 16, 1975 [age 19]:

“GREAT NEWS TODAY! Mr Ledesma has nearly solved all of my problems! He told me that it is almost a certainty that they will hire me again part-time next year [as a high school teacher’s aide]; all I need do is clear it with Mr. Peters [the vice-principal] tomorrow and I’ll be set. I can quit Rexall [Drugstore] now and live in the dorms next semester and work here part time. Even if I work only three hours a day, I’ll be getting about $150 a month. And this summer I can be FREE and finally go visit Jeanne on the East Coast and see more of this beautiful country. Oh, please, Mr. Peters, say yes! Can you imagine, world?????”