{"id":17350,"date":"2015-10-20T12:13:10","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T16:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=17350"},"modified":"2015-10-20T12:14:01","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T16:14:01","slug":"monday-senior-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/monday-senior-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Senior Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yoPf98i8A0g?rel=0\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: selected scenes of beauty from an episode of <\/em>Seinfeld<em>]<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">I<\/span> had an appointment for a routine visit to my doctor&#8217;s office in the morning. As with many doctors, I guess, every time you interact with the people at this office you&#8217;re expected to present proof of ID (driver&#8217;s license generally) and proof of medical coverage (Blue Cross\/Shield, HMO card, whatever).<\/p>\n<p>I figured I&#8217;d minimize the fumbling with my wallet while actually at the check-in counter, by getting the two cards out of my wallet in advance, and putting them in my shirt pocket. So before going inside, I pulled my wallet out of my hip pocket&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Like many men&#8217;s wallets, mine includes not just a cash compartment but multiple &#8220;slots&#8221; into which you can insert credit cards, various forms of ID, wallet photos (if anyone still carries them), and so on. And like many men &#8212; think George Costanza, as in the video above &#8212; I probably consider these little cubbies waaaay too convenient for our own good. (I think I finally threw out my Borders Rewards card last year. I&#8217;d held onto it because, well, the company may have gone under but You Never Know!)<\/p>\n<p><em>Anyway<\/em>, I do try to keep the wallet organized, roughly speaking. Of course, I&#8217;ve got the driver&#8217;s license in the only slot with a transparent plastic window (I don&#8217;t know why; everyone always asks me to remove the license from the wallet before they&#8217;ll inspect it). I&#8217;ve got a slot reserved for local-business discount cards. There&#8217;s one for my debit card and a couple of others which I use regularly, and of course one for credit cards. My Costco and Walgreen&#8217;s membership\/discount cards are in a slot by themselves. And so on. The point being: I got the driver&#8217;s license out immediately, and then flipped to the slot where I keep my Blue Cross card.<\/p>\n<span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">P<\/span>anic, confusion: <em>my Blue Cross card was not in my wallet!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Mentally, I ran back through the last few days, picturing where I&#8217;d been, all the occasions on which I transferred the wallet from one pair of jeans to another, all those on which I&#8217;d handled the wallet <em>at all<\/em>. I went back weeks, and then months &#8212; just looking at moments when I might&#8217;ve handled my Blue Cross card. Had the pharmacist asked for it for some reason. (Answer: no.) The dentist? (Ditto.)<\/p>\n<p><em>How the hell could I have lost my Blue Cross card?!?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And then I move on to consider the possibility that it had actually been removed by someone else, for some reason. Would there be some kind of&#8230; some kind of <em>value<\/em> to a health-insurance card? Maybe I was caught in some kind of not-very-sophisticated caper to steal expensive medical treatments &#8212; or prescriptions?!? &#8212; from a hospital or drugstore. Could I be arrested or otherwise held accountable for someone else&#8217;s use of the card? I couldn&#8217;t could I? And&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>How the hell could I have lost my Blue Cross card?!?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>All of that occurred mentally, as I said, within the space of about four to five seconds. In the meantime, I was rifling all the other compartments in my wallet: like, <em>Jeezus<\/em>, am I still carrying <em>that<\/em> goddam thing around? and like, Why do I have <em>two<\/em> discount cards from that department store?<\/p>\n<p>I finally began to accept the inevitable. I was going to have to call The Missus to ask if for some arcane reason, she&#8217;d needed (and hence borrowed) <em>my<\/em> Blue Cross card &#8212; not a conversation I was looking forward to, because, well, (a) &#8220;Why would I have taken your Blue Cross card?&#8221; and (b) <em>How the hell could I have lost my Blue Cross card?!?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And suppose &#8212; as was all but 100% certain &#8212; the Missus did not have my Blue Cross card. What then? Should I try to get the doctor&#8217;s staff to accept my status on a provisional basis? Maybe I could just breezily assert, &#8220;I don&#8217;t have my card with me but there&#8217;s no change since last visit&#8221; &#8212; head off the uncomfortable question (<em>How the hell could you have lost your Blue Cross card?!?<\/em>) before it even got asked.<\/p>\n<span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">O<\/span>h, I&#8217;ll tell you &#8212; I ran the gamut of four-letter words, sitting there in the car with the contents of my wallet scattered like autumn leaves around the front seats. No, really: <em>How in the HELL<\/em>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>I looked down at my wallet. Actually, it wasn&#8217;t empty &#8212; I hadn&#8217;t bothered to look in that one slot because I wouldn&#8217;t possibly have put the Blue Cross card there, behind my debit card&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And then a moment later &#8212; patting my shirt pocket in satisfaction &#8212; I gathered up all my other cards and notes to myself and other wallet detritus, reloaded the ammo dump so to speak, and proceeded inside&#8230; having discovered my Blue Cross card right where <em>really<\/em> always keep it: in the slot behind my debit card.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d been outside in the car for fifteen minutes. But boy, am I smart: <em>I didn&#8217;t have to fumble with my wallet at all!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: selected scenes of beauty from an episode of Seinfeld] had an appointment for a routine visit to my doctor&#8217;s office in the morning. As with many doctors, I guess, every time you interact with the people at this office you&#8217;re expected to present proof of ID (driver&#8217;s license generally) and proof of medical coverage [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,16,3286,713],"tags":[1036,4193,4194],"class_list":{"0":"post-17350","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-themissus","8":"category-obsessions","9":"category-humor-writing_cat","10":"tag-modern-life","11":"tag-healthcare","12":"tag-old-age-no-advanced-middle-age","13":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4vQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17350"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17357,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17350\/revisions\/17357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}