Doctor, doctor!

Not sure on source of picture!

I was in the doctor's waiting room yesterday with my poorly little girl. We walked in, I saw that it was fairly full and  immediately started to (almost) panic about were to sit.
 Will I have to sit next to someone? If so, what will they think? Will baby M behave? Will she understand that we whisper in waiting rooms? These questions raced around for probably less than a second, the same amount of time I had to find a place to sit!
 I sat next to a man.
 Was he put out by this? I don't know, I didn't want to make eye contact. Just like one other lady who I noticed, looked like she was concentrating extremely hard on keeping her head down and eyes fixed on the floor.

 The waiting room silence played on, until...

...A man decided to talk not whisper to my little girl. The bravery.
He asked her questions, he commented on her wellies, and dared to even sing 'Row Row Row Your Boat'.
 We were waiting for about 30 minutes, and for 20 of them, this waiting room maverick chatted and smiled away to my little babe, while the others in the room were clearly pretending it wasn't happening.
 I was in between reading a magazine and politely smiling at the more and more frequent "Do you know this song?..." and "Show me your wellies", while thinking to myself that this seemed a little strange, and what did the other 'waitees' think to this cavalier approach to getting through the waiting room silence?

The head down lady remained in her chosen attitude for the whole time we were in there. Amusing and quite admirable really.

I try to keep my head down in waiting rooms, but most of the time I'm far to nosey, so that awful thing happens where I look up, I accidentally make eye contact with somebody, so we smile. But then  (for some reason I will never know), I keep looking at them!! Then they notice, but the polite smile stage is passed. So now I'm just a weirdo, remaining totally silent, trying not to look at anyone (but failing)... in a doctor's waiting room.
 The stress!

We were called in to see the doctor and all was well with the world again. (From my view anyway, probably not for the remaining silent dwellers I left behind).

I'm sure we have all wondered why, but why don't we talk to people in waiting rooms? I'm not saying I'm up for it. In a strange way, I feel almost proud that in Britain, most of the time- we don't talk to strangers.
It's like, we are aware of accepted British social behavior, and asking someone in a doctor's waiting room "How are you?" is certainly not it.
We know most people won't want a conversation with us, and if they were to talk, would we really think that it was normal?
We know that we probably don't really want to talk to them either.
We know that we are quite happy feeling awkward, trying to keep our heads down, and doing all we can not to make eye contact.

I get the feeling that our great, proud, stiff lipped and composed nation is cool with that.

Taken from www.telegraph.com