The hilarious thing about watching people talk about their experiences with pokemon go is that I just keep remembering all the edgy ‘realistic’ pokemon reinterpretations that used to go around, and how ‘no the pokemon world would be SO DARK you guys’.
And now there are people going around IRL catching pokemon and they’re just like ‘I WENT OUT AND MADE TWENTY NEW FRIENDS AND FOUND AN EEVEE AND EEVEE IS ALSO MY FRIEND!!!’
So it seems the pokemon setting actually was pretty damn accurate.
I was just at a park by a lake with crowds of people as thick as if there was a fair, all playing Pokemon Go. People rode by on bikes, trying to hatch eggs (one was playing the bicycle theme song on a speaker). The only thing people talked about was Pokemon.
It looked and sounded exactly like I was actually walking down a Route in a Pokemon game. The whole thing was completely surreal.
Pokémon Go, the summer of 2016, was the last pure moment in the world & I miss it
One of the most bizarrely cool people I’ve ever met was an oral surgeon who treated me after a ridiculous accident (that’s another story), Dr. Z.
Dr. Z. was, easily, the best and most competent doctor or dentist I’ve ever encountered – and after that accident, I encountered quite a number. He came stunningly highly recommended, had an excellent record, and the most calming bedside manner I’ve ever seen.
That last wasn’t the sweet gentle caretaking sort of manner, which some nurses have but you wouldn’t expect to see in a surgeon. No; when Dr. Z. told me that one of my broken molars was too badly damaged to save, and I (being seventeen and still moderately in shock) broke down crying, he stared at me incredulously and said, in a tone of utter bemusement, “But – I am very good.”
I stopped crying on the spot. In the last twenty-four hours or so of one doctor after another, no one had said anything that reassuring to me. He clearly just knew his own competence so well that the idea of someone being scared anyway was literally incomprehensible to him. What more could I possibly ask for?
(He was right. The procedure was very extended, because the tooth that needed to be removed was in bits, but there was zero pain at any point. And, as he promised, my teeth were so close together that they shifted to fill the gap to where there genuinely is none anymore, it’s just a little easier to floss on that side.)
But Dr. Z.’s insane competence wasn’t just limited to oral surgery.
When I met Dr. Z., he, like most doctors I’ve had, asked me if I was in college, and where, and what I was studying. When I say “math,” most doctors respond with “oh, wow, good for you” or possibly “what do you want to do with that after college?”
Dr. Z. wanted to know what kind of math.
I gave him the thirty-second layman’s summary that I give people who are foolish enough to ask that. He responded with “oh, you mean–” and the correct technical terms. I confirmed that was indeed what I meant (and keep in mind, this was upper-division college math, you don’t take this unless you’re a math major). He asked cogent follow-up questions, and there ensued ten or so minutes of what I’d call “small talk” except for how it was an intensely technical mathematical discussion.
He didn’t, as far as I can tell, have any kind of formal math background. He just … knew stuff.
I was a competitive fencer at this point in time, so when he asked if I had any questions about the surgery that would be necessary, I asked him if I’d be okay to fence while I had my jaw wired shut, or if it would interfere with breathing.
“Fencing?” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “like swordfighting,” because this is another conversation I got to have a lot. (People assume they’ve misheard you, or occasionally they think you mean building fences.)
“Which weapon?”
“Uh. Foil.”
“No, it won’t be safe,” and he went off into an explanation of why.
Turns out, he was also a serious fencer – and, when I mentioned my fencing coach, an old friend of his. (I asked my fencing coach later, and, oh yes, Dr. Z., a good friend of mine, excellent fencer.) (My coach was French. Dr. Z. was Israeli. I never saw Dr. Z. around the club or anything. I have no idea how they knew each other.)
So this was weird enough that later, when I was home, I looked Dr. Z. up on Yelp. His reviews were stellar, of course, but that wasn’t the weird thing.
The weird thing was that the reviews were full of people – professionals in lots of different fields – saying the same thing: I went to Dr. Z. for oral surgery, and he asked me about what I did, and it turned out he knew all about my field and had a competent and educated discussion with me about the obscure technical details of such-and-such.
All sorts of different fields, saying this. Lawyers. Businessmen. Musicians.
As far as I can tell, it’s not that I just happened to be pursuing the two fields he had a serious amateur interest in – he just seemed to be extremely good at literally everything.
I have no explanation for this. Possibly he sold his soul to the devil.
He did a damn good job on my surgery.
He’s a 900 year old vampire. No other explanation.
a magical unicorn deer that carries the moon on his horn, the stars in his antlers, and the entire night sky within himself! remake of very old character. :D
I’m on register at work:
~waits patiently behind counter with absent smile until a customer walks close enough and/or shows necessary amount of interest
~has a set script of prompts in my head to follow during transactions
~cheerful yet non-descript customer service voice and can repeat same exact tone infinitely.
~breaking from prompts or skipping through parts may cause minor glitches, such as accidentally repeating the same prompt again or completely skipping necessary ones
~absentmindedly tends to my area using the same five or so actions in a continuous loop until new person arrives
~Abnormally knowledgeable in my craft
~wears same outfit every day
~Nothing unusual phases me
~walking away and coming back is like a brand new interaction. I have little to no memory of you
