Bangles

Hauled myself out of bed at 5:15, unsure the state of taxicabs at that hour. To my surprise I got one almost immediately, and so rolled into the clinic before 6. Ten minutes with my eyes closed on a couch in the waiting room, and then ushered into the conference room for my pre-op orientation.

Parked in the conference room alone, filling out forms and wishing for death. Enter two women, my age or a little younger than me, clearly strangers also.

1: "It says here you have to take all your jewelry off for surgery. But I can still wear this, right?" points to gold bangle

2: "Oh I know! I hope I can wear it. I don't even know where the screw driver is!"

1: "I know! I'd have to, like, buy one."

Me, interrupting: "You have to take them off. It's surgery."

2: "I can't!"

1: "I haven't taken it off in, like, years! [to 2] They always want to polish it for me, but I'm like, no! I like it! It's my thing. I have foreign sand in there!"

Me: "Y'all are both wearing bracelets you can't take off?"

1 haughty: "Yes. They're from the seventies, like a love bracelet? The idea is, your lover screws it on you and then you can't ever take it off."

[Sidebar - I know this. They're by Cartier, and cost about one zillion dollars.]

2: "That's the whole idea. They're like a modern chastity belt."

Me, having had no coffee, so dangerously free of filter: "You mean, like a handcuff? That's fucked up."

THUD

Anyhoo. Onward to retrieval tomorrow!