The waiting room and office that I remember best is from my dentist. Dr. McMahon‘s office was a converted 50s era house on Western Avenue in Albany. It was a corner lot, with a couple of concrete steps up to the front door, which entered into the waiting room. It had thick 60s shag carpeting and shiny green Naugahyde sofas as soon as you walked in. I would sit at the coffee table and look at the Highlights magazines that other kids had completed. During the short wait I couldn’t help but listen to the cheesy cheesy 50s pop-chorus music coming over the speaker. That music, I must confess, has done more to shape my musical tastes than I am comfortable admitting. I love a cheesy light listening harmony vocals deep down in a way that I’ve only ever seen in the Brendon Fraser character in the movie Blast from the Past. How do you wind up having nostalgia for something you disdain as a child. From what was clearly the house’s original parlor/living room you could go to the repurposed kitchen/reception area or off to the right was the main dental exam room, which must have been a lovely master bedroom, with it’s windows on two walls. It’s spacious floorspace had room for the x-ray arm and the torture chair with a little tiny spit sink. I sat in that chair every six months from before I could remember until I finished college.

There was a smaller darker (it probably only had one window) secondary dental chair room down the hall, but I was only in it once. He pulled two of my teeth in. I didn’t like that room.

I went to the eye doctor a lot, but the only thing I have to say about Dr. Kassoff was that he always seemed to be running an hour or more late. I hated that. One time it was closer to two hours and my mom actually gave him and the office staff a telling off. That didn’t change anything. I think the biggest difference between Dr. McMahon‘s office and Dr. Kassoff’s was that there was something about the dentist office that acknowledged you were a person while you were there. Part of it was that it was a house, I suspect. That was lacking in Dr. Kassoff’s office. It felt like I, and the other patients, were unimportant ghosts while we were there. There’s a scene early in the movie Beetlejuice when Alec Baldwin and Gina Davis are checking into the netherworld and they’re just sitting in a DMV like waiting room to be processed. That’s the way the eye doctors office felt.

I had a doctor’s appointment today, which got me thinking about waiting rooms and offices I have known as a patient. I don’t remember my pediatrician’s office much, because I only went once a year, if that often. It’s possible I only went when I had shots. In my professional experience most kids complete the bulk of their visits to my office when they reach age 4. I just realized that means most of them won’t remember me. That’s a bittersweet thing.