A few days after Brett Kavanaugh’s lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, I went to my pain doctor in Burbank, California, where a verbal brawl broke out in the waiting room. It was about Brett slim and controversial confirmation.
I was there for a consultation regarding a “pain block” injection and exploratory procedure. And since they told me to be prepared for a long wait, I fired up my laptop and began to write.
The waiting room was full, mostly with elderly people in various stages of decay and pain. People were limping, shuffling or had oxygen tubes up their noses. The woman sitting directly to my right was tiny and frail – no more than 95 lbs. Her hair, pure white, was in a straight pageboy and she entered with a walker. On the other side of me, sat a very large redheaded woman, around 65 years old, covered with tattoos. She looked like a beer-loving but retired biker chick. This was the unlikely setting for a brawl.
As I began to write, someone brought up Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Out of the blue, a man (also, with white hair) commented that he didn’t think Dr. Ford proved her “case.” Suddenly, I felt the two women flanking me sit up perfectly straight. Game ON. They began yelling at the old dude and fired questions at him simultaneously. He tried to answer, but their yelling quickly escalated, and I quickly got embarrassed and concerned. Inexplicably, this man remained calm and tried to explain that he did NOT vote for Comrade Trump.
These women wouldn’t hear any of it. They were screaming on behalf of Dr. Porter. It was a senior citizen political brawl over a woman’s word. Their passion was painfully intense and although inappropriate, it was authentic.
In a Greek-like chorus, both women began calling him a “PIG,” a “misogynist,” and a “misogynist pig,” in rapid fire. Ganging up on the man sitting directly across them in a small room, they refused to listen. My own inner voice shared guidance. It said: “Keep the fuck out of it.” As a result, I carried on quite an interesting conversation in my head; and just when I thought “OH NO,” the door flew open and the nurse said, “Cathleen, are you ready?” I was indeed, SO ready – you bet. Get me outta here.
Picking up my laptop, I leaned into the tattooed lady having a tirade, looked straight into her eyes, and (quietly) said, “Listen, I agree with you, but I don’t think we need to call anyone a pig…right?” Shockingly, she dropped her head, backed off and nodded in compliance! Amazingly, she stopped – probably because I said that I agreed with her. She got validated.
Once safe inside an interior office, the nurse said, “MY GOD – what was that all about?” When I finished the consultation with the doctor about his plans for sticking a huge needle in my ass, the white-haired man was still in the waiting room, but the two furious women were gone. He was apparently unharmed and unaffected by the attack.
I walked over to him and said, “You really handled that situation well.”
His response? “Hey, I’m married.”
Bu-du-bump
In the end, the heightened drama and outrage I witnessed yesterday, following Kavanaugh’s unfortunate swearing-in ceremony is a microcosm of what’s going RIGHT NOW, all over the U.S. I simply never expected it to appear in a doctor’s office.
As a result, I suspect that senior women will vote in droves. OR, I wouldn’t be surprised. The distinct impression I got on an intuitive level was that both of these “older” women were yelling about their own personal history of sexual abuse, which had just been lifted from the ashes of remembrance.
There’s a lot of pain out there folks – I wish us all a quantum healing.