Wide Open

Yankees 6 Red Sox 2

Red Sox 7 Yankees 3

Yankees 8 Red Sox 3

When I walked into work yesterday, I entered the little Red Sox cocoon I inhabit for 9 hours a day and prepped myself for the onslaught of Yankee fans. The time ticked by slowly. It was surprisingly quiet, almost disappointingly so. I expected the Pinstripe Posse to stop at my desk to flaunt the previous night’s drubbing. But there was nothing. I could actually let myself be blissfully unaware of what had happened, and by the time I left early for my gynecologist appointment, I had nearly forgotten about the scores.

When I arrived at the office, I sat in the waiting room for well over an hour. There was nothing to read except for parenting magazines and one random Motorweek. I stared at the clock on the wall, trying hard to keep in mind that it would soon be over and I’d be walking to Starbucks for my celebratory “I am woman, hear me roar” mocha. But then I started to notice that the waiting room was clearing out. Big belly after big belly left the room, and I wondered if a girl had to be pregnant in order to get seen around this place! With my odds of being struck by lightning greater than my odds of being pregnant, I passed the time devising ways to look pregnant or act pregnant, but it was to no avail. I would just have to stew in my own estrogen for a while.

Seventy minutes after my arrival, I was ushered into a room by the doctor’s assistant who mispronounced my name. She told me to hop up on the table, and for a moment I paused, knowing that the very jeans that touched the subway seat were now on the very paper that would shield my naked rear from the table. I shrugged off just how unsanitary that seemed and focused on the matter at hand. When the assistant was done with her routine, she handed me the dusty rose paper gown and the flimsy white paper sheet with a cheery “Everything off! Opening in the front!” Then she was gone, and I was left to enjoy the draft.

The list of things going through my mind: the room is sterile, the pain chart is asinine, I can’t read the patient rights in Spanish, do they sell that plastic supply cart at Target, the woman on the phone outside the door left her insurance card at home, I’m hungry, my armpits are sweating, and my naked rear is now resting on subway germs. The fact that Schill got shelled didn’t even crack the top 100.

When my merry OBGYN entered the room, we made small talk as she went through the standard questions and admonished me for not taking calcium. She told me about her accidental encounter with self-tanner, and I told her I had a cold. Then we got to the crux of my visit. She called the assistant in, lowered the back of the table, and continued yammering. I knew the ploy, but I played right into her hands. Talk talk talk and maybe she won’t notice. Talk talk talk and she won’t feel a thing. Talk talk talk and the embarrassment is over. Then came the question that was supposed to keep me occupied for the next three minutes. The doctor asked, “Any fun plans for the summer?” Feeling my brain starting to disassociate from the lower half of my body and knowing that all thoughts were flying out of my head, I simply replied, “Well, I’ve got tickets to Fenway.” Suddenly, like a voice from beyond, the assistant piped up, a snarky smirk on her face, “They lost last night.” I froze. My brain was torn between the order to scoot ever further down the table so that my rear felt like it was hanging over an abyss and the anger I was feeling towards the woman who had just taken my blood pressure. She continued, “My family are huge Yankee fans.” Lying there in nothing but my birthday suit and a sheet of looseleaf, I was rendered speechless by the stirrups. The statistics, the schedule, A-Rod’s cheap slide… all of it was gone, and I was forced to listen to Yankee love in the most undignified of positions.

Wouldn’t you know, the Evil Empire lurks in the most unlikely of places, and not even the gynecologist’s office is safe.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to find a new doctor that meets my criteria: female, Metro accessible, Red Sox fan.