So it looks like the last time I did any of these was number 39. That was in 2017! My memory sure was a lot better then. I’m glad I did the ones I did because I read back on some of them and was surprised at what I had forgotten. Hopefully I have a few more memories in the hopper.
40. What did you do to amuse yourself as a child when you had to wait for a long time? (for instance, at the doctor’s or dentist’s office)
This is not a great journal topic. I can see why I delayed it way back then. Because like…what do you say? Um…I would have a book. Or I would read Highlights magazines. Or barring that, like whatever magazine they had. Vogue. Women’s Day. Men’s Health. Whatever. Magazines were the back of the shampoo bottles during a shower equivalent of appointments.
I do know that I did not like it when some previously unknown person had circled the Hidden Pictures or the What’s Wrong page on the back. I did not ever do that. I didn’t even do it in my own Highlights magazines. We had a subscription and I did not touch it with a pen or pencil. As if. Marissa did a few times and that really annoyed me. The magazine must remain pure and untouched so you can play it again and again. Not used up and discarded. I had a nice big stack of Highlights magazines in my room because I didn’t throw them away.
When I went to Dr. Huey’s office when I was a little girl, they had a carpet that had all these lined patterns on it and I would imagine them as highways and imagine a little car driving around on them. This what what I had to do if I was called back to the exam room (to wait more, of course) and I had not taken my magazine with me. I didn’t think we were allowed to take the magazines to the exam rooms. I have always been very concerned with what was the correct thing to do. I now realize that I could have taken the magazine and saved myself the grief of imagining a little car on the little highway (which was, admittedly, very dull).
What else did I do? We did used to have to wait so long and not be entertained, didn’t we? Well, I would bite my fingernails and then move the bit off nail around in my mouth and poke myself in the tongue with the sharp end; I would look at the ceiling and find patterns to create images in the popcorns or on the gray parts of those old foam ceiling tiles everyone used to have; I would examine brochures for credit cards or for health issues; I would roll up my jeans and then roll them back down, experimenting with different looks; I would reach in my pocket and find a little ball of denim lint and then chew on that; I would pull one hair out and then wrap it around my finger and watch my fingertip get purplish; I would drag my feet across the carpet, turning some of it one way and some of it another way, making lines into a pattern or a drawing; I would pull the Highlights subscription card out of the magazine and make it into an airplane, a blow-up origami box, or if I was lucky enough to have a pencil or pen, I could draw on it or write poetry.
Who needs a cell phone when you have all that?
I keep thinking I need to keep the cell phone down and just let my mind wander and do these kinds of things again. It was boring, but it wasn’t that bad. I’ve gotten better about bringing a book to appointments, just so I can read instead of look at my phone, but I should probably just people watch sometimes. Examine my surroundings. That sort of thing. I mostly bring the book because I don’t like the idea of all of us collectively staring into cell phones and I want to appear more intellectual than that or something. I’m not completely sure, but it must be one facet of how I want to present myself to others, because I would probably rather be scrolling X or playing Candy Crush unless it’s a really, really good book. I also want to keep my brain from completely melting into a pile of gray goop, so that’s part of it. I don’t know. I do a lot of things that I’m not completely sure about, or why I do them. Probably more of what I think is “correct,” like not taking the magazine to the waiting room. I have always just wanted to present as normal, I suppose.