MARILYN PENN: CALLING DR. ALPERT
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A stranger named Dr. Alpert entered my dentist’s waiting room this morning and sat down. The answer to your obvious question of how I knew this stranger’s name is that as soon as she sat down, she pulled out her cell phone and listened to her voice mail messages on speaker. One was from a woman who sounded distraught and wanted Dr. Alpert to call back immediately; two others were less distinct. Dr. Alpert did not return the first call but she did call someone else- perhaps an adult child or a close friend – to chat cozily and loudly about how the play was coming along. As she did, the other woman in the waiting room and I faced each other with increasing discomfort, neither of us brave enough to say what we wanted: Lady, there’s a sign on the wall asking you to please turn off your phone – dammit, just do it!
There was more that I wanted to tell Dr. Alpert – that people who need other people to know they are doctors are revealing their own insecurity, like Dr. Jill Biden who insists that she always be announced in that way. She’s a doctor at an inauguration, at a charitable event or spotted in the audience at a dog show. Curious to know what Dr. Jill got her degree in, I asked google who informed me that Jill Tracy Jacobs has a Ph.D. in the topic of “Student Retention At the Community College.” Next to physical education, that has to be the least impressive topic for such an advanced degree but we’re living in times when a 51% graduation rate from high school is deemed success instead of abject failure.
I wanted Dr. Alpert to know that her loud monologue was not equivalent to a quiet chat between two people; that only one door separated her from the great outdoors on a beautiful day; that her insistence on subjecting everyone (staff included) to her boring ruminations was a form of hostage taking; that instead of sounding cool, she sounded as if she might be talking to herself or her voice mail. I know that Dr. Alpert won’t be dismayed by my using her name since she was the one who broadcast it to begin with.
Dr. Alpert may have some patients or students who are reading this and who will now know that she doesn’t respect confidentiality and actively insists that others listen to her messages containing other people’s names and problems. Dr. Alpert is a caucasian female of indeterminate age and average height; she is moderately overweight with a brownish pony tail and a really arrogant face just begging to be punched. If you know her, please do that for me or at least please forward this.
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