PLEASE DON’T YELL AT ME

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter

I am a big, mature [i.e., old], rugged [i.e., decrepit] Scots man.

Raluca Vucescu is a little, young, cute Romanian woman.

I know it can sound sexist and disrespectful to call a woman “little and cute.” As Katie Couric once said, about always being described as little and cute, “Bob Costas is little and cute, but no one describes him that way.”

I mean that description, however, only as a contrast. She is little and cute and Romanian. I am big and not-cute and Scottish.

That means she should fear me. The only people tougher than the Romanians are the Scots. But it’s the other way around. SHE scares ME.

She is my MD.

If I return to her office as a fat unexercised man, and fail the A1C test, she will yell at me. That’s what our daughters told their friends during high school when we quietly demurred to go along with one of their hare-brained schemes. “My parents YELLED at me!”

That’s what Dr. Vucescu will do. She will look up at me with disappointment, both of us knowing full well that I said last time, “No, I don’t really need any medicine; I can do this on my own with diet and exercise,” and she will quietly say, “We need to talk about medicine.” In other words, she will yell at me.

That’s one of the strange things about old age. Roles are reversed. We used to be the ones who yelled at the young miscreants. Now we are the old miscreants, being yelled at. I liked it better the other way.

The good thing, though, is that Dr. Vucescu specializes in geriatric medicine. The older I get, the more she likes me.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.