The things you learn in the waiting room!

My car got its 24-month service today, one month early. That’s because I missed the 21-month service by, well, two months. I never got around to making the appointment. There was just too much going on that was higher priority, and then I got sick, and yadda yadda yadda.

It’s the same excuse I give for letting my hair grow as high as an elephant’s eye before getting it cut. I have better ways to spend my time. Maybe the waiting makes it a little more satisfying when I actually do get around to these tedious chores. I don’t seem to mind the fact of them nearly as much as I mind forcing myself to do them.

They told me at the Saturn dealer that today’s service would take less than two hours. I could have had a ride back to the home-slash-office, but somehow the idea of sitting in the lounge at the dealership for two hours had an irresistible appeal. I took the latest issue of The New Republic with me, more to hide behind than to read. But read it I did, in spite of the woman sitting two chairs away from me who would not shut up.

And no one asked her to, least of all me. I’m sure the two people who came and went in the chair between us over the time I was there were fascinated by her life story, and now I know more about her than I do about my own mother (who is several years younger than this woman).

She’s led a fascinating life, if by fascinating you mean she got pregnant after the doctor told her it was impossible and she fell down three times last week. (Her daughter, by the way, is interesting as well. Her first marriage lasted 47 hours, and she’s getting married again next month. But she lives in— oh, I think I’ve forgotten. Some place where you can’t get an annulment. Utah, maybe?)

Anyway, the things you learn. She takes all kinds of medication for various ailments, but for her arthritis, she eats nine golden raisins a day, soaked in gin. That is, the raisins are soaked, uncovered, for 24 hours before she eats them. Apparently this works better than any medication. She read about it in a magazine.

I was out of there in less than an hour. This was supposed to be a major service, so I wonder if maybe they might have left something out. Not that I wanted to stay any longer, but who knows what else I might have learned.