Short Stories, Long Odds

I went to have a mole excision on Thursday - its a regular occurrence because I had a melanoma in 2000. So a couple of times a year I see my dermatologist and once a year I go to the oncologist.

These are two odd trips - at the dermatologist, rather than getting a beauty peel or some similarly vain treatment, my doctor is fending off attacks from my skin, which is trying to kill me. At the oncologist, I’m merely there to have a blood panel and chem gas done to make sure nothing bad is happening, while everyone else is there trying to not die.

So anyways, I’m always awake for the procedures, and my dermatologist, for the 24 hours or so I’ve been around him, seems like a decent, intelligent, good man. He’s from Puerto Rico, drives a nice car, and dates. The last time I went in he shocked me by dropping the “End Times” bomb on me, so I wasn’t necessarily surprised to find out he’s a Republican.

So dduring my surgery, he tells the nursing staff assisting him that I’m a Democrat, that I’ve in fact worked on campaigns before. They all boo and hiss and laugh. I say something witty, like “Well, your guy is working out great, huh?” They all sort of mumble and continue the cutting.

Towards the end of the procedure, my doctor says “Hey, when you start paying taxes, you’ll become a Republican!”

To which I answer, “I’ve been paying taxes for years.”

And he says “Well. real taxes. When you start making a lot of money.”

And I says, I says to him, “But thanks to Republican legislation and how stacked the cards are against me, I probably never will, despite being a class warrior.”

I don’t have to pick a new dermatologist now, or anything, but damn. You’d think I totally blasted ass in there or something.