I dreaded the appointment with the knee doctor today. The thought of it dragged me down into a state of ‘let’s get it over’-ness.  There’s nothing wrong with my knee. In fact, this was the “fine- go away, fly and be free – it’s been 1 1/2 YEARS since surgery, there is NOTHING wrong with this knee” appointment. (And I didn’t mention falling down the prairie dog hole a few weeks back.)

The best thing to wear is shorts that are short enough that the dr will not have to move them and then double the tickling. I’ve learned the hard way. The assistants stand in the doorway and laugh – which is fine – but this way there is about 50% less to laugh about.

I just hate going in there. It’s a sports medicine place. So they like athletes. The walls are covered in sports gear and framed, autographed photos of all their amazing amateur/high school/college/professional athlete patients. They say things like “you’re the best, dr!” and “couldn’t be doing this without you!” while posing in uniform. Or a candid shot while the post-surgical patient and success story is in the middle of a great touchdown or whatever.

All that’s fine. It’s a sports medicine place. Like I said. And all of that does back up what you hear about this guy: he’s the best. only go to him.

It’s what goes ALONG with all that sports stuff that drains me of any inclination to voluntarily walk through those doors without making sure it’s absolutely totally necessary and required of me. And that is… the ugh– we have here: A Mom. A normal, regular mom-looking mom-type. Not an athlete. Not a future success story with an autograph for our office wall. Just a mom. Ugh.

That vibe, I do not like.

This doctor guy is really good. I have no reason to doubt that he’s the best, like everyone anywhere says. And I’m grateful.

This other thing doesn’t hurt my feelings, so much as it strikes me as bad marketing to let on that you have serious favorites among your clientele. If I like you and think you’ve done a great job at whatever your business is – I will make sure EVERYONE hears about you. I’m a referral machine if I believe in you. And if you do a great job, and are nice, but send a really weird but highly consistent message that you wish your talent and time were directed at  someone different/better/more interesting… then I won’t really want to send people your way.

It took me a more than a year and a half to figure it out and put it into words that this is what I don’t like about that guy, and about that place. That’s how I know it isn’t personal — if my feelings are hurt in some way, it does NOT take me a year and a half to figure out why. (It might take me a year and a half to decide to do something about it, but that is actually quite different.)

There were years of horrible guy-wrenching family therapy in which the biggest lesson I learned was that I do NOT need the return  love/approval/attention of someone else in order to be perfectly happy in my life. It made much more sense to stop waiting, wishing, and working for those things (that weren’t coming) and learn to be perfectly fine and content with myself and my life without them. Can’t imagine how miserable and pathetic I’d be if that had not sunk in. But it did. And today oddly proved that in some small way.

So a doctor’s office that thinks I’m nothing special is really… nothing at all. I’m only telling you all of this because it led to a funny contrasting scenario.

I had to leave the doctor’s office and go to the Tire Place. OH HOW I HATE THE TIRE PLACE. Let’s not get me started on how I hate the Tire Place. It’s cold and cold and more cold and I just hate it.

But I ran over a startling number of nails and had 2 flat tires so it couldn’t be avoided. The Tire Place was empty and there were lots of Tire Guys standing around with nothing to do but come treat the ordinary mom-looking, mom-type in short shorts like she was their ABSOLUTE favorite kind of client and YOU COME BACK NOW, PLEASE? Or just stay NOW. Really? You have to go?

And oh, please no, I hope I don’t have to go back to either one of those places ever again, but it was an interesting set of encounters for one morning. I think they both prove the same thing – what other mortal, flawed human types think of you is extremely circumstantial and inconsequential, and it’s better to try not to let the good or the bad opinions matter too much.

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