05.19.06
Gah!
I got up at 07:30 today for an appointment with the optometrist at 8:30. Couldn’t remember exactly where it was, so I got out the phone book. E 15th street. Hmm. I looked at the map in the front. Oh yeah, E 15th is right off Boise. Near the hospital. I could picture the place now. I set off with plenty of time to get there, and it was gone. The whole office complex had vanished. After wasting ten minutes trying to figure out why the addresses were in the 1700s instead of the 3500s, I finally stumbled onto the office complex. It was definitely on 18th street. The practice was gone, and something had replaced it. I couldn’t even be sure where it had been. I called them and asked where they were located (typical man thing: wait until you’ve wasted ten minutes searching and are ten minutes late to call and ask for directions.) Yes, they’ve definitely moved about fifteen blocks east and three blocks south. I thought I would double check my appointment time and let them know I would be a little late. Yep, it was definitely at 8:30—“Do you want to set up a new appointment then?” I explained that I would be there in about ten minutes. She explained in so many words that it hadn’t been a question— They have a twelve-minute grace period. I looked at my watch. I was eleven minutes late and many blocks away. “How about something next week.” “I’ll have to call back later.”
It’s so easy to blame someone else. Twelve freaking minutes? You’ve got to be kidding me. or You can’t tell me that if I hadn’t called, but had walked in twenty minutes late that they’d have turned me away. or Why didn’t they flipping tell me they had moved when I made my appointment?
My mental tape recorder answered the latter. “Now, have you been to our new office?” I had answered in the affirmative. It seems that in trying to make three doctor’s appointments at the same time I had gotten the optometrist confused with the dentist, who had moved several years ago. Of course I knew the dentist had moved! I even tried to give them my dental insurance.
I should have looked up the address before this morning. I should have Google-mapsed it (that’s my answer to the verb Mapquest) when I had trouble remembering, then I would have seen it had moved. I should have known something was really wrong when a medical office complex had vanished off the face of the earth. And when addresses were way to low.
Just like the stamps incident, I got mad at other people because I knew it was my own fault. Why are we so eager to vindicate ourselves at another’s expense?