This morning saw me log a few hours in a hospital waiting room. Nothing serious. The Capt’n had his annual Test of Not Dying, which involves 24 hours of liquid diet, little sleep and what can only be described as When Good Gatorade Goes Bad. It’s like a test of endurance, wills and my bag of inappropriate jokes. It’s turning into something of a June ritual. At least this round didn’t coincide with any major pop star death. *
Anyway, since the hospital has a strict No Peanut Gallery policy in procedure rooms, I was unceremoniously shepherded into a dreary lounge to wait for the Capt’n's return. I pulled out my book and my knitting, but being slightly wired from a lack of sleep and too much caffeine, I did a survey of the other tenants before putting my head down. Of the nine others in the room, five were watching the lobby television and four were reading.
And that’s where it got weird. The other readers were all reading “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” which, look at that, was the same book I’ve been working through this week. Had the readers (three women between the ages of forty-five and eighty and a gentleman of about seventy) been seated closer together, I would have called an impromptu waiting room book club.
Waiting Room Book Club, like Convenience Store Dance Party or Sunday Brunch Karaoke is a spontaneous gathering where people dance to The Knack or belt out a little Dione Warwick, or sit around and talk about how we’re all reading this taut, Swedish thriller at the same time and we’d better all discuss it.
Except that I was too much of a chicken to harass these worried looking women and the grim-faced man, all of them relegated to the waiting room. Still, I wanted to know their reactions to the plot as it unfolded, if anyone else was reading it with Google Maps parked on Sweden, and if maybe, maybe someone in the publishing world felt like it was time to have a dialog about our casual attitudes about violence against women and if SPOILER ALERT the violence in this book highlights the problem or simply falls into its own trap of exploitation and titillation. Maybe, if I was being particularly Women’s Studies, I’d trot out the bromide about how the worst a woman can do to a man is reject him, but the worst a man can do to a woman is kill her and see what the other readers thought about it.
But I didn’t, because I’m a giant chicken.
Still, Waiting Room Book Club. Keep your eyes peeled, campers. There’s opportunity everywhere.
*Last year, every conversation began with “Didja hear Michael Jackson died?” Did it matter that this was a doctor coming to talk to me after admitting the Capt’n into ICU?** Nope. “Hi, I’m Dr. Oldengrummpy. Didja hear Michael Jackson died?”
**He got better.