The Christmas fruitcakes…
On your marks….get set….GO! The turkey is in the fridge, the dishes are done, the football games are over.The tranformations are complete, we have left ”fall” and are officially in the Christmas Season (“Holiday” for those of you who get offended when I speak of Christmas)
An aside: For those who may care, Pharmacy Chick does not celebrate Winter Holidays…she celebrates Christmas. She goes to Christmas concerts, listens to Christmas music and likes to watch Christmas specials on TV. Do not try to take Christ out of my Christmas please. I may celebrate it low key, but I like my CHRISTMAS.
Of the many kinds of people I run into during December, two kinds stand out during the holidays: the Estatic Neurotic who is planning the perfect Norman Rockwell Christmas if it kills her, and the Scrooge whose sole purpose is to ruin everybody elses.
Both of them will make me nuts. The Estatic Neurotic (EN) will get prescriptions for Ambien, Xanax and Omeprazole. She’ll want a refill every 10 days until March, and she will fill them all on different days. She will insist the Dr told her she could take them all AS NEEDED, and to her it means several times daily apparently. She will bake bread instead of buy it. she will make 30 kinds of cookies, and every relative within 500 miles be coming for THE Christmas Dinner. Her house would make Martha Stewarts look like trailer trash. She will send 500 christmas cards she made herself and will write a personal note for each one. She decorates 4 trees IN her house, and hires professional decoraters to hang 10,000 lights on the outside of her house. Her husband learned the 4 magic words “whatever you say, Dear.” She has no spare time so she makes her visits to my pharmacy a complete nightmare. She is in a rush for everything. 20 minutes is 19 minutes too long for her. “I have to get to the christmas play rehearsal” (that she is directing) she will whine. I’ll bet her pulse is a resting 120. She wants early refills on everything because she has “no time” to come in when its due. As Christmas day approaches and her family congregates from all over the planet, she starts to bring them in “Uncle Joe left his Insulin in Topeka, can you help us?” and “Nephew Nathan dropped his Inhaler in the toilet”. None of them will know their pharmacy phone number. “Its on the corner of 2nd and Oak in Topeka”. Sure, just let me pull that one out of Yahoo….
The Scrooge, however, hates everything about the holidays. He hates the music, the shopping, the mood. His motto is “whats so great about it?”. He never cracks a smile unless somebody else is in a mood more sour than his own. He whines about the cost of everything which is confusing becasue he hasn’t bought a christmas present in years. He doesn’t send Christmas cards. No matter what nice thing we say, he says something contrary. “Have a nice day!” “Its too cold outside“ He complains that the store is too busy, and the line is too long. “I’ll just fill my prescriptions elsewhere” he’ll whine when he has to stand in line. Good luck with finding a shorter one.
Already I have had my fill of both of them. The energy of EN is stressful and Scrooge could kill the mood of all the Whos in Whoville. I made a pact with myself a long time ago. I know what its like to be on the clerk end of the counter during December, so I decided that I would be the antithesis of every clerks nightmare. I look them in the eye tell every person who waits on ME that I hope their day is wonderful. I will ask THEM what they want for Christmas. I want to make THEM smile, cuz there will be a hundred more before and after me who will beat them up.
Let them think I have overdosed on some happy pill. They need it.
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