By Tim Sanders

I have spent a lot of time in doctors’ waiting rooms. That is not because I’m one of those weird predatory people who likes lurking around doctors’ waiting rooms; those people are called pharmaceutical salesmen. No, it’s because–and I don’t want to brag or anything–over the past few years I’ve had several very dramatic and exciting medical procedures performed on me which would have killed a lesser man than myself. But I am not a lesser man than myself, and time and time again, operating on pure grit and manly determination, I’ve made my way home from the doctor’s office, fell exhausted into what I like to call my "recliner of suffering," sighed and said to my wife, "It’s bad, I tell you! The doctor says that cramp in my big toe may be due to a serious calcium deficiency. MILK AND CHEESE–that’s the ticket! Could you bring me some chocolate milk and a ham and cheese sandwich, dear?"

But I digress. We were discussing waiting rooms. Why, you may have asked yourself, do doctors need waiting rooms? Well, they need them because, according to a recent scientific study which I just completed last week during a trip to my endocrinologist’s office, for every ten minutes a patient actually spends in the presence of a living, breathing doctor, he spends two hours and forty-five minutes WAITING to see that doctor. That is why your doctor needs a special place for you to wait. After all, if he tried to cram all ninety-five of the patients he’d scheduled for that very same 10 a.m. appointment into one of those little examining rooms, things would get ugly. Patients would grow restless. Before long they’d all want to play with the little rubber knee hammer at the same time, and fights would break out.

So doctors have spacious waiting rooms, and most waiting rooms have magazines. The magazines are there so that the waiting patients don’t have to sit there, staring vacantly at each other as the minutes turn into hours. Instead they can select a magazine and stare vacantly at it as the minutes turn into hours. Now, if the magazines in those waiting rooms were interesting, then there’d be less vacant staring and no reason for this column. But most doctors’ waiting rooms have only a few categories of magazines, which include:

1. MEDICAL JOURNALS - These are very bleak looking publications with names like "Frontal Lobotomies Today," "Popular Bowel Disorders," or "The Monthly Polyp," which do not serve to enlighten patients, only frighten them. Federal regulations mandate that every doctor’s waiting room must display these magazines in plain sight, to reassure the patients that their doctor is indeed keeping up with the very latest news in his or her specialty. Your doctor, however, does not read these in his spare time. Instead he spends his spare time carefully studying:

2. GOLF DIGEST - When I was very young, a college acquaintance took me to a golf course to show me everything I needed to know to become successful in later life. I did not like the game. When I found a hole much closer to where my ball had landed than the one I was supposed to be aiming for, he said I could not shoot at that one. That seemed unreasonable to me, but I followed his directions and whacked away until I finally got my ball in the proper hole. When I asked him how many points I got for that, he said there were no actual points in golf, only strokes. He explained that it was a par 4 hole, and I’d gone 17 over par. He’d only scored 2 over par, which made me feel pretty good, it being my first time on a golf course. I told him not to worry, he’d do better on the next one. His low score must have really depressed him, because he immediately wandered off by himself, muttering something or other which I didn’t understand.

The point is, I knew right then and there that golf was a horribly boring game. No heckling, or cheering, or tackling, or any of the stuff that made a sport fun. And although I thought back then that the only thing more boring than playing golf was watching somebody else play it on TV, I was wrong.

Reading a golf magazine in a waiting room is much more boring. But doctors all seem to gravitate toward the game, and stock their waiting rooms with their old golf magazines. Perhaps, given all the stress associated with the medical profession, reading those Golf Digests helps physicians fall asleep at night.

3. YACHTING MAGAZINE - I like boats, if you can fish from them. Yachts, like the ones they show in the "Yachting Magazine," are basically floating retirement homes. And as to fishing, if the owner of one of those yachts were to find a can of worms in his dining area, or on his polished hardwood deck behind the lounge chair, he’d fire his entire crew. Your average guy, sitting in a waiting room, might as well be considering putting marble columns in front of his double-wide mobile home as to be gawking at yachts in some doofus yachting magazine.

4. WOMEN’S MAGAZINES - There are generally a few of these scattered around waiting rooms. They are magazines like "Better Homes and Gardens," "Good Housekeeping," and "Southern Living." AAAARGH! Most of the guys I know would rather epoxy their eyelids shut than be forced to read any of those publications.

Which is the point of this column. There’s very little for a normal, uncomplicated guy like myself to do to occupy his time in most waiting rooms. He might find the occasional instructional article on avoiding monster radioactive northern pike attacks in a "Field and Stream" tossed onto a table by mistake, but those are only the exceptions, not the rule.

The next time you find a "Cycle World," a "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition," or one of those fascinating and educational "Victoria’s Secret" catalogs in a doctor’s waiting room, give me a call. Whatever his specialty is, I’ll do my best to develop a serious case of it and pay him a visit.

And if he were to install a couple of pinball machines, he’d soon need a bigger waiting room for the overflow business. Guys love pinball. And then he could afford a bigger yacht. You know, to use in the next crappie tournament.