This admission

I don't think I've told this to anybody.  You see, there are two kinds of people in this world: Those who clean their ears daily with q-tips, and those who do not.  I am the former of the two. Every day, without fail, a cotton swab and I go at it and it's a pleasurable experience for all involved. Or so I assume. But how does one begin such a lifetime of auricle servitude? I know just the moment when it happened. Perhaps you've seen the quintessential 80's teen love ski movie Better Off Dead with the ever deadpan John Cusack.  Perhaps you haven't, and if that's the case, go rectify that shit right now.  He battles wills and wits with Blond Popular Hunk  Who We Swear Is 17 But Looks About 30 Because That's How We Rolled In Those Days on the slopes of some nameless midwestern town costarring an actress with the most hysterically horrendous French accent you've ever freaking heard.  In this movie, there's a fabulous bathroom scene wherein John starts stuffing q-tips in every orifice he has above the waist. I've used them ever since. My name is Jake, and I'm a swabber.

This job

For the love of Xanax, people, please, I beg you on my knees, take. Your damn. Medications. As ordered. Look, I know, you feel like you've gotten comfortable with that med I prescribed, you think, "hey, this is amazeballs! I shall take more!"  Because more is always better, as any crackhead will tell you.  And then you run out early. And then there are no refills left. And then you call me because suddenly you're not feeling so hot because you either a) overdosed yourself or b) ran out early and are going through withdrawals. And I gotta swoop in and pick up the pieces. Usually at 4:45 on a Friday, because I'm the only clinician fool-headed enough to actually work till 5 on Fridays.  

Allow me to make this as vodka-for-my-splitting-stress-headache-clear as I can: That shit written on the bottle? Those are called "orders" for a fucking reason and I didn't put them there just so that my stock in label-printer-ink would go up.  No, betchiz, I wrote those just for you and only you and they are not suggestions.  They are not meant for your buddy who is having "a rough day and just needs a little something to help him calm down."  No.  I decided on that dose based on your weight, physical health and health history, allergy history, possibly also on family history as well as on the severity of the symptoms I'm treating your I-didn't-go-to-3-years-of-psychopharmacology-classes-but-I-still-know-better-than-my-NP ass for.  I don't fucking know your buddy. I didn't spend an hour pounding his history into my keyboard for later reference. No. I did that for YOU.  Thus, that shit on that bottle, if I may be so bold as to reiterate, IS FOR YOU.  

If I tell you to take one of those every day and they work well and you end up having a fight with your baby daddy at the Burger Barn and then decide to power down 5 of those bad boys with your Mountain Dew to "take the edge off" and also as it happens your ability to be conscious, well that's just Darwin proving himself right one more damn time. You may think that calling me after the fact and saying "Now I didn't want to lie about it so here's what I did what do I do now?" is going to make us all good. No, idjit.  Wanna know how to make me happy? It's easy. Take your damn meds as I damned well prescribe them, and then tell me all about how they did or did not work and then fucking well wait for further fucking advice. That simple.

I'm not trying to go all Jack "I won't take criticism from a person who rises and sleeps under the very umbrella of protection I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it" Nicholson on you, really I'm not, I work for you, you pay me to give you options and you pay me to be sure the options you get are safe ones tailored to your needs.  You're welcome. Now go take your meds.

This conversation

In a lunchroom full of punchy, slightly bitter, highly snarky, community health workers:

Coworker #1: Hey Coworker #2, do you mind if I ask you how much you spent on your wedding? Because this couple spent 17 million bucks on theirs. (Brandishes cover of People magazine.)

Coworker #2: Oh, sure, I don't mind. I only spent 10, because I needed the other 7 milly for a downposit on that little Caribbean island we had our eye on.

Me: Well, sure, that's just good fiscal planning.

CW #3: Pardon me please, but just how does one make a "downposit?"  When I buy my island I'll need to know.

CW#2: Well, you need a good Realtor for one thing. I use Bob, you know, in Miami beach. Knows his stuff.

Me: Oh yeah, Bob, he's good. Sold me a little Isthmus last year.

(Much slightly hysterical laughter ensues.)

This guy

I work in community health. Which means that there are a lot of people with a lot of problems and not a lot of money coming in for mental and physical health care, usually the acute kind.  Some folks are more acute than others.  My first week at this gig, I was a bit overwhelmed by the pace of the work and the sheer magnitude of the illness of the patients.  As my office is the first you pass once you get past the lobby, a lot of them would pop their heads in or look in as they passed to mutter alternately bizarre, hilarious, and threatening things.  One gentleman in particular made a point of stopping as he passed, raising his hand high in the air as if to wave to someone across the street though my door is a few small feet from where I sit, pause for a few moments with a somewhat vacant smile while he marshaled his resources, and then let fly with a hearty, "Hi!"  I blinked a few times, wondering if more was coming, but no, he stood frozen with the hand in the air and the toothless grin.  I took the cautious route. "Er, hello?"  Gratified, he walked away with an even wider grin.  Hmm. Well, that was an awkward encounter but painless I guess if not distracting. Oh well. Back to work.

He came back the next day. He stayed all day this time, about 6 hours, and every time he walked past my door he went through the same ritual: Pause. Smile. Raise hand and wave. "Hi!" Wait for response. Shamble off. He did it no matter how busy I looked, how bored I looked, if I was on the phone or talking with a staff member. If my door was open, the ritual occurred. I didn't know him, he wasn't my patient, I didn't know what kind of cognitive delays he might be living with, but after 4 repetitions in the same day it was getting annoying.  What the fuck dude, I'm working.

Days passed. Turns out he comes back to spend long days at the clinic about 3 or 4 days a week.  He's always hanging around. I started keeping my door closed more often so that I wouldn't have to deal with the distraction.  Every time we had what I refer to now as the wazzup interaction, I got a little more aggravated by the break in my flow. I mean, he never wanted to talk about anything, he just seemed to enjoy interrupting me interminably. WHAT DO YOU WANT RANDOM MAN AT MY PLACE OF WORK?? YOU'RE DRIVING ME MAD!

And then I had A Moment. My door was closed, and I had just had a rough few clients in a row.  I was in the kind of mood that would sour milk.  I noticed his legs pass by my window without stopping, which usually filled me with a bit of relief. But this time, I had that vague angsty feeling of missing something.  Shit. Wait.  Where the merry hell was my effer-fucking-vescent smile and greeting??  I don't get a lot of people smiling at me in my work day, and I was wasting one I could really depend on.  I opened my door and kept it open from there on out unless I was on the phone.  I realized that I was becoming dangerously close to aggregating that kind of jaded bitterness that you see in some community health workers.  Those ones who don't seem to actually like people. Well fuck that. I refuse to go down like that. I got into this biz directly because I liked interacting with people, thrive on it in fact, and so just why was a cheerful salutation getting my panties all bunched up my ass. Good question. So I proceeded with  a proctological panty extraction procedure and completed a high attitudinal enema. Done.

Now, I look forward to my daily dose of cheerful, no strings attached wazzup as much as I do my morning coffee.  He never wants more than a second of my time, and it's inexplicable but every time we wazzup I feel a bit better about the universe in general.  And when you work with the kind of population and burned out staffers I do, that's gold bankable right there.

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When you're setting your spiritual compass by a monster corporation frequently found en flagrante delecto with Wal-Mart (union busting sack-cheeses that they are, and no, I won't link that for you, FLUID) and known for anally raping their employees to keep their coffers up, you know it's time to start waving that thing in a figure 8 motion to re-calibrate.