Among all the people I meet, some of them are part of a very particular tribe : I'm talking about doctors. They resemble each other so much one may think they all have the same daddy and the same mommy. Maybe they do, maybe they all live in the same place, and they're one big family. Doctors are funny guys whom I meet in rooms that always have the same smell and the same peculiar vibrancy : cold and muffled at the same time. I also recognize them right away by that starched tissue, with that neck and those buttons going down to the knees. It looks like a shirt-skirt. (daddy says it's a white doctor's apron). Often they have a strange necklace hanging around their neck, soft like my pacifier, and at the tip there's a round and cold steel bit, which they pull out of a pen filled shirt pocket to stick it on my back or on my chest. Last telltale sign : the waiting. At the doctor's, you always have to wait, and there are always toys of absolutely no interest to me, half broken, and mommy and daddy insist I play with them every time.
As far as behavior goes, there are also undeniable mimetic details : they all use a pretty voice, polite and lilting, they talk a lot and say lots of complicated words to my parents, then, when they talk to me, they give me "buddy talk" (when we barely know each other, if at all). I recognize that clever bunch just from hearing them speak.
It's been a while since I figured out Doctor meant ill. Sometimes though, we go see them even though I'm feeling well. Usually I don't like the way that smells. It usually means a jab or other obligations I don't like are planned. I must say in the beginning of my already long and rich existence, there were a bit too many "doctors" and "tests" for my taste, the worse still being to this day the trimestrial endocrinological exam (complete with blood sample). But since these occurences are becoming rarer, I end up getting used to it. (to be continued...)
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