More Dopey Advice

So I ran across another piece of advice in my pregnancy for fathers book that, though it stems from good intentions, upon closer examination is found to be, shall we say, flawed. The advice had to do with being assertive at the doctor's office and not being afraid to ask questions, even if you're afraid they might seem silly. The book's recommendation for overcoming this trepidation was to picture the doctor in their pajamas. Now like I said, the intention here is clearly a good one. Doctors are (hopefully) rather knowledgeable people, and this can cause some people, including myself, to second-guess whether or not I want to question what they have to say. Thus, this advice is intended to help people remember that doctors are just fallible human blobs of goo like the rest of us. The problem comes in with the pajamas. First off, doctors, particularly OB's, are known for showing up in scrubs, which are damn close to pajamas. So right off the bat, your little imagnings don't really take you on a very long journey. So then you're sitting there wondering what in the hell you can imagine about this doctor that will give you the strength to just open your yap and ask what you gotta ask. And then you remember that other piece of advice that you heard one character give another character on any number of episodes of any given T.V. show where the one character had to give a speech and was really nervous about it, and the other character told them to just picture the audience naked. Naked, yes, you think to yourself, perhaps this could work, that could really...except that, wait, no, no, that won't work, that won't work at all, that's very...no, that simply won't do, that's...and you shudder as you realize just how totally fucked up it is to go imagining other women naked while you sit there in your wife's ob/gyn office.

I'm really glad that I worked that scenario out mentally before I had to experience it for real in the doctor's office. My advice for not being afraid to ask the doctor your questions is simply not to be afraid of them. They're just people, shit, ask what you gotta ask. And if you really need some sort of mental exercise to get you in the mood to ask your questions, then just picture your money floating out of your wallet and into the doctor's. You shouldn't have any problems after that.