musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

What, can the Devil speak true?


There are times when riding in a bus can be like overhearing the goings-on in a Confessional Booth; I am not a Catholic, I hasten to add, but I’ve seen enough movies about Confessionals to feel I should have been. It’s not the priest’s advice for redemption that intrigues me as much as the similarity of what is being confessed to what I am forced to unload on the dog.

In my experience, confessions are not common on city buses; maybe there’s not enough time between stops; maybe there’s a fear that not everybody in adjacent seats are strangers; maybe there’s a justified fear that even strangers listen. And judge…

Me, I’m always open to a confession, especially if it doesn’t require moving my ears too close to the confessor, or having to adjust my hat. Sometimes, though, if the confession booth is in the seat ahead, it is easy enough to lean forward inconspicuously as if merely rummaging through the backpack I’ve cleverly positioned on my lap. Of course, it helps if the pitch of the penitent’s voice is in sync with the way I’ve tuned my hearing aids to eliminate the noise of the bus.

At any rate, last week en route to my dentist’s office in the far end of the city (don’t ask: good dentists are hard to find; good dental techs even harder), I was forced to take city bus along streets which I seldom travel. The people on the bus and those standing in front of the storefronts seemed unusually taciturn; I seldom travel across the bridge to downtown; North and West Vancouver are my ‘hoods’; downtown Vancouver is, to me at least, alien territory. The language they speak is the same, but the subject matter is downtown-speak.

The noisy, rattling bus I was on seemed accustomed to whispered confessions that, even with the pretend need for adjusting my backpack contents, or fiddling with my hearing aids, did not elicit any concern of being overheard from the occupants in the seat ahead.

Although I am well used to the noise of buses, I am also used to people speaking, not whispering their divulgences. But, of course, anything whispered is done that way for a reason, and therefore pretty much ensures eavesdropping, eh?

I have to confess that, being a stranger in a strange vehicle, I wasn’t exactly sure of downtown bus protocol, and tried to be cautiously curious about overhearing things. I mean I didn’t want to partake of plans for a robbery, or a mugging, and decided I would definitely not get off at the same stop as them. Still a whisper is seductive, is it not?

Let’s face it, a whisper connotes either gossip, or potentially malevolent secrets – for either of which I’m all ears. I think it goes back to my childhood when my friends were planning something and they didn’t want me to tag along. I suppose I was nerdy, even then… social skills were never a forte of mine. And now, no one suspects an octogenarian of nerdiness, let alone the ability to hear well enough to acquire much information from whispers.

As long as you’re reasonably dressed, and do not smell too much of the street, I find you are usually tolerated on a bus; I like to think that I do not smell incontinent, and although a trip to the dentist does not mandate a suit and tie, nor expensive after-shave, my habiliment was in keeping with my age. I could be trusted to sit behind whisperers, in other words…

I’m not sure what, apart from the whispering, initially interested me in eavesdropping on the two elderly women in the seat ahead of me, to tell the truth. They were both dressed in faded woolen overcoats -one red and the other… pink I guess- and otherwise almost identical silvery-coiffed heads. From behind, it was difficult to say much about their appearances otherwise, but either could have passed for my mother, I think.

“Did you get your sweater on sale, Tildy?” was the first whisper I heard; it was definitely uninteresting, and I almost closed my backpack at that early stage, until Tildy whispered back that she thought she might have forgotten to pay for it after trying it on yesterday.

“It looked so good on me in the change room,” she added, “I went out to show Janice -you remember her; she shops there, too- and we got talking and wandered out of the store into the mall together.”

Her friend nodded at the news, but before she could whisper anything back, Tildy whispered that she’d worn it again today to pay for it at the store. “I try to be honest Eth, even if I’m kind of forgetful and easily distracted.”

“What did they say at the store when you went back and told them, Tildy? Especially since you were wearing it…?”

Tildy shrugged. “There were different salesgirls there today, and before I could confess my error of walking out with the sweater, one of the girls told me how nice the sweater looked on me. She said it was such a popular a sweater that they’d sold all their stock yesterday.”

“And… did you confess…?”

Tildy bowed her head a little at that and then shook it. “No, they all seemed very pleased at the news of yesterday’s sales, and the girl I talked to was happy that it looked so good on me; then the other two girls came over and admired how well the sweater suited me… and, well, I didn’t want to change the mood.”

Unfortunately, at that point, glancing out of the bus window at the unfamiliar streets, I realized I was pretty close to my dentist’s office so I put my pack back on, hurried to pull the cord, and then started to head for the door. But on a glance back at Ethel, I could see her shaking her head slowly and, I think, disappointedly at her friend. Tildy’s head was bowed, and seemingly repentant as Ethel poked her with her finger.

I’d would have loved to hear more, but my teeth were calling. I think I’d have made a rather poor confessor…

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gozzter

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