I couldn’t see the title of the book so it must have been about Scientology.

I

There’s a reason people get sick—the attention. But, I’ve discovered as of this morning, there’s a reason good friends drive their sick friends to the doctor and then spend the next two hours in the waiting room having their patience tested—the neighborhood.

Of course, this requires explanation.

It’s 10:03 AM, and I’ve brought Amanda to the Student Health Center. She’s been very sick to her stomach, and I felt she needed better attention than my telling her to “take it to the toilet” every hour or so.

Little did I know the call to action that I was unwittingly engaging myself in.

I found a seat, in the corner, and began my determined sit. I flipped through all the magazines twice. I checked my Twitter, my Facebook, my email.

Thirty minutes pass, and still—no Amanda.

After nearly forty minutes of pretending to re-read Diabetes Living and Prevention, I was left with my nothing to occupy me but my old standby: the Imagination.

That is, until other patients started wandering through the automatic double doors.

Everyone carefully chose their seats, and unpacked their belongings. Sort of like setting up their respective houses: jackets came off, laptops pulled out, backpacks emptied. And that’s when it hit me. I wasn’t in a waiting room.

I was in a neighborhood.

The rows of seats, were roads and streets. The people in their chairs, homes of single-parent households and displaced migrant workers.

What I was witnessing was a community in the making. The birth of a neighborhood.

Communities, I think, are made every day in thousands of small ways. Some last a long time; but most are temporary. Like this morning’s community. This one was built entirely on stress, and was destined to become a community in constant danger of eviction.

And this neighborhood, like anywhere else, had as much to like as dislike.

I appreciated, for instance, the severe economy of conversation on my particular street. A Hello here and there, a respect for personal space, and then that’s it. No more. I turned to my neighbor on the right to ask him where he got his shoes.

I wanted a pair; I really liked them.

“Don’t know.” He never even looked up from his iPhone.

No filigree, no dragging it out. No pretense.

More neighborhoods should be like this, I think.

And even though you might argue that it borders on the rude, I should remind you that despite the fact that most communities are driven by what I would term “self-interest,” at least in this community, we were given the option of a Suggestion Box.

It’s also a very clean neighborhood.

And to top it all off, most of us get validated parking and pills, when it’s time to “move on.”

II

It’s 11:36 AM and eight new people have moved onto my street. I should say three, since one is a family of five. If I were having to guess, out right, I would say that I think at least three of them are here to be surgically removed from their cell phones.

Or, perhaps, to discuss the cost of having smiles sewn back onto their faces, and, if there’s enough money left over, an extra neck muscle that would act as a reflex to force you to make eye contact.

Two of the new neighbors are children. What joy.

They immediately engage themselves in a contest of who is the best jumper; their shoes skid from tile to tile, between the sitting area and the water fountain.

They whisper, how well-trained,  until the boy decides he’s the winner. The girl then hits her head on the water fountain and begins to cry.

Gutsy move on her part.

The mother takes all the children with her as she bravely crosses to the “wrong side of the tracks.” In other words, the doors that stand directly behind a large free-standing sign that reads, “No cell phone usage past this point.”

Who would ever want to go to that side of town? The whole point of having a cell phone is to keep connected to the world around you without having to be connected to the world around you.

The father stays at home…three seats down from me. This is, I imagine, equivalent to his being on vacation.

How well-trained.

III
Returning from the bathroom, I see that my nicely shoed friend has moved. Disappeared. It was inevitable, I know, but I was hoping to ease him back into a conversation, enticing him to offer me at least three shoe store options for my own research.

I really wanted a pair of those shoes.

In his house now, sits a young woman, blonde and covered in what I would assume was every sweatshirt she owned.  She was patiently sitting, reading a book. I couldn’t see the title of the book and so therefore, it must have been a book about Scientology.

I was mentally preparing her a Welcome to the Neighborhood casserole when she began to cough without covering her mouth.

A nurse pops out from behind the No Cell Phone Usage sign and calls, “Emily?”

The blonde girl closes her book and coughs her way over to the nurse and slips behind the wooden doors.

The nerve.

It was going to be a really good casserole, too.

IV

12:00.

I feel fairly certain than Amanda has, at this point, decided to give her body to science. I’m going over What Steps To Take Next, in bringing this to the attention of her family when a rogue wheelchair carrying, magically, a large woman in it comes hurtling around the corner, down my street.

Closely behind it, lumber two equally large children hollering that they were “sorry, Momma! But Chelsea wouldn’t hold my Coke!”

I don’t know how that adds up to a runaway heavyweight, but it did.

I only stopped laughing because an emergency then occurred: a young man had been hit by a car, while making a left turn on his bicycle and didn’t know who he was, or where he was. He all but crawled up onto the receptionist’s desk while he waited to be admitted.

He was immediately ushered away.

I was glad for that. That kind of neighbor really depreciates the value of the whole neighborhood, you know.

I checked on him. He’s going to be just fine, so there.

Do you suppose if he never remembers his name that he’ll still have to pay?

V

Fifteen minutes after twelve, and Amanda finally emerges. Diagnosis: severe stomach bug, which if I had to draw a picture of it, would have the pinschers of a praying mantis, the head of a dung beetle, and the body of a lion.

Also, a beak.

She’s going to pull through. Thank goodness.

As I start to pack things up, Amanda traipses over to the pharmacy to wait for her medication. I pass the Comment Box on my way out and decide to leave them a suggestion myself:

With the flu season on our heels, it might behoove you to consider creating a gated community within the waiting room.

Because the sick people are really needy.

Signed, Emily.

Oh, now. Don’t look so chagrined.

Every street has an Emily.

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