A nurse dourly explained that my doctor was a pediatrician, and pediatricians only see children, and I am twenty-five years old, and twenty-five-year-olds are rarely children, because when a twenty-five-year-old tries to play a children's game like kickball, their feet get tangled in their ivy-like curtain of pubic hair.
"That's profiling!" I said, crossing my legs.
The nurse didn't care. She said that my doctor only sees patients who are younger than twenty-one, and I'm twenty-five, which is four years older than twenty-one, and--
"I mean, yes, I'm twenty-five," I conceded, "but I've been told that I can pass for a 'haggard twenty-three!'" I raised an eyebrow and smoldered at her.
The nurse didn't care. "Pediatricians specialize in pediatrics, which is a branch of medicine dedicated to young human beings, which is--"
"I get it!" I stomped my feet. "I know the derivation of 'pediatrics!' I have a Master's degree!"
"Exactly," she said, and left me at the counter; alone, flustered, and closer to death than almost everyone in the waiting room.
Mom consoled me with a juice box.
Look on the bright side: you got a juice box and didn't have to sit awkwardly in the waiting room, towering over all the children who look up at you like some sort of post-grad King Kong and want nothing more than to launch a fleet of toy airplanes at your hitherto well-meaning face.
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