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Wednesday, June 08, 2011

If there's one thing I've dreamt of my whole life, it's meeting an octogenarian who can effortlessly recreate scenes from 'Airplane!'. It's an obscure dream, I grant you, but today it finally came true.

One of my patients this afternoon was a lady in her 80s who chatted to me at length about everything from her grandchildren to the wound on her leg and what she was having for dinner, but when she finally got up to leave, she turned to me at the door, shook my hand, thanked me for my time, wondered how I'd managed to grow a beard in the time it had taken her to stop talking (I'm guessing there), and then said "Oh, and one more thing. My name's Doreen, not Shirley."

I looked confused (which is nothing new for me), so she helpfully added "You kept calling me Shirley".

Now, admittedly she was white-haired and deadpan...


... but I felt she lacked Leslie Nielsen's comic timing. Nevertheless, I picked up her ball and ran with it, by calling the nurse a stewardess and replying "Surely you can't be serious?". To which she responded "You did!" and walked out.

It was a disappointing end to a short scene, but with a few more rehearsals it should be alright on the night. The irony is that I hadn't called her Shirley or Doreen all day. I'd been calling her Mrs 'X' since she walked in the door. So I think I need to stop saying "Certainly there's nothing obviously wrong with your eyes..." when I look at the deaf patients' photos.

2 comments:

Phil's Mum said...

You certainly do get them!

Dave said...

The old ones are the best.