Like most everyone else, we postponed  our routine exams .   We were supposed to have our eyes checked  in March, when it’s nice and cool.  Then came the covid-19 pandemic, and we kept moving our appointments , and finally put them  off until July.  At first, it was kind of fun driving to Indy.  We hadn’t been on a trip since Thanksgiving, and it was good to get a change of scenery.  But when we finally landed in the clinic’s hot  parking lot and entered the building, we were in the Twilight Zone*.  It was a surreal visit to the doctor.

Only in a science fiction movie, would you be greeted in the lobby  by a masked woman.  If I had imagined such a scene where we must have our temperatures taken. I would have thought I was in a fantasy world.  We, too, were masked.  And cautiously allowed to enter the inner sanctum and proceed to the admissions desk.

Inside, all was quiet.  Only half the front desks were staffed so that everyone sat far apart.  The masked clerks swiped our insurance cards with gloved hands. Instead of signing the usual privacy forms, they presented  a plastic coated one to read. We signed it electronically.

There were few patients but all were masked.  There was nothing to read while we waited.  No books, newspapers or magazines.  Unfortunately, I had left my cell phone in the car, but the other patients  had remembered theirs , and studied them with apparent fascination. After the long  drive, I needed coffee, but there wasn’t any.  Nor was there  water to drink.  Or cookies to nibble.  Thankfully,  the restroom wasn’t locked.

I observed the masked personnel  gliding quietly back and forth in the waiting area.  Some of them looked at me with smiling eyes.  Remember that song, “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling?”  It had a new meaning for me yesterday.  A masked person with eyes that turn up and form little crinkles at the corners is actually smiling at you.  And it feels pretty good when you’re sitting all by yourself in a nearly empty waiting room.

While being examined by technicians and the doctor, all equipment was immediately sanitized before use.  You had to wait while it dried.  There could not have been a single germ floating in the air. As we checked out and made new appointments , we had to wonder.  Will we have survived the pandemic by this time next year?  And , once again, will we enter the twilight zone while on  another surreal trip to the doctor?

* Twilight zone is the mental state between reality and fantasy.