Wheaton’s Way

I’ve decided there are two kinds of people in this world: Those who aren’t bothered about whether or not they hear news immediately… and me.

Have you ever had a time when someone calls you and asks if you’re busy, and you say “Yes”, and then they say, “Oh, okay – I’ll tell you later”, and hang up?

Are they kidding?! Tell me what later??

When something like that happens, my brain goes immediately into overdrive. Did they have a tone? They sounded a little off. Was this going to be bad news? Call them back, quick! Ugh – no answer.

Was this about that joke I made at the party last week? I thought I might have gone too far, but they seemed to laugh. I thought it was funny, everyone else thought it was funny. Maybe I hurt their feelings… Vicki, why do you engage your mouth sometimes without thinking first?

It basically goes on like that, with my mind calculating the probabilities of the reason for their call, like WOPR (see ‘War Games’) zeroing in on the nuclear codes. Three hours later, I usually come to the conclusion that our friendship is over due to something terrible that I’ve done, then the phone rings and it’s them.

“Hey Vicki, sorry I missed your 37 calls – I was in the cinema. Yeah, I was just wondering if you heard I got a promotion at work. Really unexpected, and of course, I was just thrilled… ”

[Unpacks bags, rips up one-way ticket to Guam.]

I have never understood, yet completely admired, anyone who is absolutely fine with delaying the reception of information. I called my friend Karen a few nights ago, not realising she was off the island. I had a particular piece of news to impart, but as soon as she told me she was away, it didn’t seem fair to hold her up.

“Oh, sorry!” I said. “I’ll tell you when you get back.”

“Sure, no problem,” she replied.

No. Problem. That’s just inhuman.

She sounded so blasé, so unbothered… which meant I naturally had to spill my guts, keeping her for 10 international minutes on the phone over some mundane tidbit. It was her fault, really, as she was too polite to say, “Vicki, can’t this wait until I return?” as soon as she gathered that her house wasn’t on fire.

As bad as the above is, do you know what’s even worse? When doctors get into the act.

Surely, there is no greater hell than when a doctor who is completely unavailable on weekends leaves you a voicemail at 4:59pm on a Friday to say that they have got your test results and would like you to “come in on Monday, please. [Disconnect].”

Whatever happened to ‘First, do no harm’? Despite my obvious bugaboos, I cannot be the only person who finds that kind of behaviour beyond the pale. Absent those results, the next step is the inevitable Google diagnosis in order to have any hope of enjoying Saturday and Sunday. Enter symptoms into the search engine and hunt for possible maladies.

Result: basket case.

Come Monday and the dreaded appointment, it seems you’re fine overall but need to watch your sugar intake.

[Unpacks bags, rips up one-way ticket to Switzerland, finds another doctor.]

In the end, of course, the real issue doesn’t actually lie with the person who said they’d tell me something later (although I stick to my doctor-example guns) – it’s my own paranoia that just runs rampant. I want to know, I need to know, I MUST KNOW immediately, or I’ll go nuts. Am I worried that my checkered past is finally catching up with me, or is my imagination way more wild than others’?

Whatever the reason, I don’t know that I’ll ever change. There are those of us who can happily get on with their lives and wait for news, and then the others, like me, who could be halfway up the aisle at their own wedding, yelling to their partner at the altar, “Hang on! I just have to take this call!”

“Yup, go ahead. I’m not busy.”