Hello, Waiting Room

Or maybe writing room.

It’s a typo, right? I do more writing in waiting rooms than in other places, especially if I am the one waiting for someone who is in turn waiting for an appointment. This morning I took my wife to see the eye doctor. The chairs were gray and the walls were lighter gray and there was a TV with video showing eye problems, several of which were gross.

*

FINE, FINE

Four dentists who did not seem to know the difference between an airport and a roadhouse overindulged in “the sauce” Tuesday afternoon and were fined $500 each. The offending quartet immediately apologized, explaining that their alma maters were engaged in a competition being broadcast on a television in the bar — two of them had attended one of the schools, and two the other — and that their passions regarding the combatants had gotten the better of them. “And I have nothing at any rate,” one man said, opening his wallet as another mimed a moth flying out. The two men not involved in this impromptu production laughed themselves breathless. The concourse officer took pity on the four and left them with a warning. The competition in question was a quiz bowl, which he later told the local news he found intriguing. “When people know things,” he said, “and I mean really know them, not just imagining that they do but knowing them deeply in a way that is provable even under pressure, it provides me with a rare moment of optimism regarding our species.” The news reporter hurried off. He had gotten what he had come for — a quote, and a longish one at that. The officer, even at that young age, held an advanced degree in philosophy and sociology from the University of Michigan. He had taken up policing as an investigation into social control. His fondness for the job would not last. Fifteen years later he would use the Incident of the Indecent Dentists, as he called it, as the opening gambit in his landmark monograph Knowledge As Enthrallment. [©2026 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas]