It’s true what they say – time is different in small towns.
I mean, it passes like it does in the rest of the world, and there are the same twenty-four (24) hours in a day, sixty (60) minutes in an hour, sixty seconds in a minute.
And it’s not like lots of things don’t happen. There’s always something going on. People are out and about, going about their daily lives.
But there doesn’t seem to be a sense of urgency. If you need something done, like getting a washer fixed (yes, we called someone to fix it), it might not get fixed for a week or more, sometimes longer. It might take a few days for a phone call to be returned. About the only people with a sese of urgency seem to be the first responders – police, ambulances – who by the very nature of their work must be prompt.
Today was a good example of this phenomena. The wife had a doctor appointment this afternoon. Early this morning the doctor’s office called and moved it to an hour earlier.
The wife tries to be extra early for everything. If she had her way she’d be at least two hours earlier than necessary. She decided she needed to leave an hour before her appointment, which is fine, except that it is a ten minute drive to her doctor’s office. Citing having some errands to run, like mailing off one of the toys she sold on eBay, we were out the door an hour before her appointment.
I took her to the office, got her checked in, then figuring I’d have some time, I could go run the errands, and she might be done by the time I got back. At that point we were nearly fifty (50) minutes early for her appointment. The receptionist even told us someone had canceled so we should be on time for the earlier appointment.
I went out, mailed the package, and finished the other errands. I headed back to the wife, figuring that she should at least be seeing the doctor, and maybe she’d be near ready to leave when I got there.
When I arrived, she was still in the waiting room. Okay. At that point, the wife asked me to go hunt down the nurse for another doctor she has been trying to get an appointment with, but they haven’t been returning her calls.
I wandered to the main reception office and waited for them to get through with several other people in front of me. I finally talked to the receptionist, who called the nurse the wife has been trying to get in touch with. After some back and forth, the receptionist told me that the wife’s primary physician needed to send in an order for the wife to see the doctor. Once she had that, she’d be able to schedule the appointment. I told her the primary had already sent one in, to which the nurse replied that they needed to send another one.
I wandered back to the wife. She had been ushered into an exam room, and the nurse was going over all the medical history and pharmaceuticals the wife takes each day. That task done, the nurse left, saying the doctor would be in soon.
So, we waited. And waited.
I had a book and got some reading done but I fell asleep. I had a fitful nap, not terribly refreshing. When I woke up, the doctor still hadn’t arrived. I checked the time and we were ten minutes away from the original time her appointment had been scheduled for.
The doctor made it in with two minutes to spare before the original appointment time. So, no time savings at all in this trip. If it weren’t for getting some time to read, this would have been wasted time.
That’s just the way it is in Small Town America.
I hope people are all on time in your part of the world, my Hordeling.
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