Monday, July 03, 2006

Unwarranted assumptions

A few years ago a girlfriend of mine had occasion to enter a clinic for a period of weeks. Nope, it wasn't a rehab clinic; if anyone's a candidate for that kind of clinic it's me.

She was a dozen years my junior and her mother was a dozen years my senior; I was about midway in age between the pair of them.

We'd been living together a couple of years at the time so of course I was there when she went into the clinic; her mother was there too. The clinic staff showed us around the premises and into the 'ward' where she'd be living for the next few weeks. We sat, the three of us, in the ward. It looked not unlike an average motel, right in the heart of Melbourne. Nice place; I've stayed in hotel rooms that were worse!

About five minutes later the nurse came in and intimated that perhaps it was time the visitors left the patient. She, the nurse, looked at my girlfriends mother, at me and then at my girlfriend.

'It's time your parents left' she said.

How mortifying!

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