If I’d had my date book on me during those dire moments in the men’s room, I would have written it in right then and there: lunch with God. That’s how desperate I was.
I sat a few yards away at the reception desk watching more and more doctors and nurses drop what they were doing to run behind her curtain. They brought in more and more machines. I recognized the respirator and the EKG. I heard a doctor shout “Anna! Stay with us, Anna!”
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The worst place to be at a time like that is in an ER waiting room. It feels like Union Station at rush hour. So I shot into the men’s room, and there I sat in the stall, thinking about how it started with wisdom teeth. I was so frantic I put in a call to God, which for me is insanely frantic. My praying style was clumsy. About all I did was promise I would reevaluate. Didn’t want to commit to too much. I could safely say I would reevaluate. Essentially I promised God we’d do lunch.
It’s those people on The 700 Club is what it is. They seem to be on all the time when I flip past the religious channel, WGOD. They scare me so much. Please God, don’t make me be one of them. I used to work at a place where right down the hall was an office with a phone bank for The 700 Club. You could always tell who the 700 Club people were because they were zombies–dart targets for eyes, dazed grins of bliss. If you didn’t know what was in that office and just saw the people coming out of there, you’d swear it was a lobotomy lab.
But where was I? Oh, yeah. It makes sense to me that God would be a woman since the creative force is essentially feminine. I once heard a comedienne say there’s no way God’s a woman–a female never would have made women bear the pain of childbirth after giving men the ability to pee off a bridge. But she failed to realize that God gave women a unique gift, the ability to fake orgasm, which means they eternally reserve the right to the last laugh.
A man gets on with a Sun-Times under his arm. The sports page headline says something about Sandberg, but I can’t tell what because it’s folded. I hope he didn’t get hurt. Of all the guys they can’t afford to lose. What a sucker trade that was. Who did they give up for him anyway?
“I was supposed to meet someone for lunch,” I say. “But it didn’t work out.” I feel a sense of peace when I say that. Now I can enjoy the box scores again.
