Endgame: The hottie in Room G

As you all know by now, the PetConnection that we all know and have dearly loved is moving on and metamorphosing into a new and exciting form in the coming days. It is still somewhat unclear exactly what form it will take, but word on the street is that it will be nothing short of totally flippin’ awesome. My participation in this carnival of whimsy is a still little up in the air due to some unresolved issues, but I will be somewhere online in the very near future, disseminating the same brand of misinformation and silliness that I have been doling out on a random schedule while here. The internet is a big place, and there’s plenty of room for everyone.

I do want to make it official, though –  I loved it here, and I loved the people — every one of them. I have been amazed at the level of dedication, concern and integrity on both sides of the keyboard with this place. The bonds I have made here will be hard and fast for a long time to come.

As we draw operations to a close here at PetConnection, pack up our boxes of words and say good bye to the neighbors, I wanted to share a wee observation with you. This observation has sort of crept up on me over the past two years, ever since I came on faculty at Purdue. It started, as these things often do, as a subconscious realization, similar to when you hear (or rather, sense) a far-off and nearly indistinguishable sound. The hum of a far-away lawn mower, the drone of an airplane over a distant hill, or the wing-flapping of a far-off vampire pig bat.

Over the months, it has imperceptibly grown to the point that, as I walked the hallowed halls of learning this morning, it hit me in the face like a roundhouse punch from Mike Tyson, followed by a nasty bite from his tiger.

Here’s the realization:

There is always an attractive woman sitting in exam room G. With a brown dog.

I know, I know:  Not exactly earth-shattering, but it’s all I got right now. Unrest throughout the world, the hunt for a mad and quite possibly cross-dressing tyrant rages on in the streets of Tripoli, cracks up and down the Washington Monument, holes at the North Pole spewing Mole Men into the arctic circle … and the best I can do to capture the redundant zeitgeist (which I am pretty sure is German for “jelly donut”) of our times and commemorate the curtain coming down on out little corner of the internet is this anomaly?

Yep , sorry. I was never one for depth.  To steal a line from “Wicked,” I am deeply shallow.

As the sound of that far away lawn mower gradually grew to the din of pig bats devouring a jet engine roaring overhead (or something), I started to notice that every time I walked past exam room G on the way to my office, there was an attractive young lady patiently sitting in there, waiting for the doctor (never me, alas) with an invariably brown dog at her side.

We have a quite a few exam rooms here. By my reckoning, since they go up to at least G, that would seven as a minimum. Perhaps quite a few more. I have not found exam room Z as of yet, but if they don’t kick me off the faculty any time soon for writing crazy shit on the internet, I may yet find it.

The other exam rooms usually harbor the same lineup of people that you encounter in everyday life; lumpish people, making their ungainly way through life. I am one of their number, these lumpish people, so I am not throwing stones here, even thought I do live in a heavily fortified and high-tech glass lair, high atop my secret volcano, the only way to reach it being my personal atomic zeppelin.

But exam room G is special. No lumpish people there. The first few times it happened I was willing to brush it off as either one of those things you brush off, or the early stages of tertiary syphilis, but as I strolled past time and again, the realization grew on me that something odd and magical was happening in that humble room. I sensed that magic was afoot and the goddess was alive.

I do not want to see this goddess's feet

Now, I don’t want you to get the impression that I spend my waking hours seeking out the company of attractive women. I am happily married to a tiny, sparkly princess and it would not surprise me one iota to see her sitting in exam room G with a brown dog someday –  she’s that hot. (And we have two perfectly good brown dogs at home to choose from, too). It’s just that as a student of the world, you get to noticing these things. I personally think that our brains are little pattern recognition machines, as well as little lumps of gray putty, and that things like this just stand out.

The phenomenon of the not-unattractive woman sitting patiently in exam room G with her brown dog brings up some questions:

Is there some vast conspiracy on the part of the front desk staff to only put attractive women with brown dogs in this room?Is it pure coincidence? Madness? Chemtrails? Mole men? Jelly donuts?Are there special exam rooms for other kinds of people? Say, overweight accountants with iguanas? Near-sighted garbagemen with capybaras?

Sadly, as we are folding up shop here, the answers to these and other burning questions shall never be known. We will just have to live with that unsettling, unscratched itch feeling as we live out the rest of our days. Just watch out for the vampire pig bats –  they’re a bitch.

My work here is done.

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