The good: I met two Iranian brothers today who had to get an ID from the DMV. It took a while and there were all sorts of classic paperwork snafus-- "you need to fill out the yellow form, not the grey one," "The department of homeland security doesn't have his birthday in the system," "why does his last name have two parts to it?" etc.--but while we were waiting one of the brothers, through much miming, was able to tell me about how he was a photo-journalist and a political cartoonist in Iran (which is why he is now a refugee--not a safe or prosperous profession in those parts). He even showed me some of his political artwork including a pencil drawing of a Persian woman with haunting eyes mutely pleading for help from behind an Iran-shaped crack in a wall. I never thought I would say this about a trip to the DMV, but I had a really great time.
The bad: Speaking of Iranians, this one Iranian girl keeps calling me with these really surreal questions. She called me once last week because she missed a meeting with her job coach and was worried that he would be mad at her and wanted to know if everything would be okay (if only she knew how much of our lives was filled with missed meetings). She then called me last week and said "my job coach found a position for me at 7-eleven but I heard that if I work there I will get shot because people rob 7-eleven stores." I like to think of it as a spiritual exercise when I have to exert every iota of my will to keep a straight face and consider her question seriously. I think it will be excellent practice for being a primary care doc in the future ("yes, it is possible that you have a flesh-eating bacteria but statistically-speaking I am going to guess that it is just a splinter"). The bad part is that she has gotten my cell phone number and has started texting me these ridiculous questions on the weekend--I am going to have a serious talk with her about boundaries.
The ugly: I was chatting with a friend-of a friend-of a friend over the weekend about his new job as a corporate "summit" consultant. He plans conferences for CFOs of fortune-1000 companies. The people with whom he communicates are such big-whigs that he is not allowed to send an email to anyone yet without running it by two coworkers for content and grammar first. I was struck by this and suddenly remembered a form I recently filled out--the end of which consisted of a single question "Do you recomend that this child is safe in his or her home?" and I had to circle "yes" or "no." No one checked over my work on that form. The priorities in this world terrify me--I have not yet gotten over that deeply disturbing comparison.
The ending-on-a-happy-note part: The sudanese mom I have been working with has made it into income-based housing! She now pays $14/mo in rent and will be able to afford toilet paper for her kids again! She ahd to move with very little notice, however, so there was no time to contact the schools in advance. Instead, her kids just walked up to each of their teachers and said "I won't be here tomorrow" and then left. (I had to field a lot of confused phone calls after that)
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