It Started in a Waiting Room

The first seed of the idea for my screenplay took root in a waiting room. It was a Monday afternoon and my boyfriend needed a medical for his Class 2 driver's license which had expired a couple of days before. Most people would have just driven with an expired license, but there is a speeding ticket/demerit thing, so I drove him.

I suppose I could have just dropped him off, but that would mean coming back. And what if I had just gotten into something, like really flowing with something, and then the phone rang for me to go get him? I would have been pissed. Frankly, sitting in a waiting room surrounded by the coughing, wheezing unwashed of Calgary’s northwest for the better part of three hours wasn't exactly my idea of fun either. The poor guy just couldn't win.

So, I used to time for one of my favourite activities. Staring at people. I look someone up, down and sideways, trying to figure out their story: marital status, kids, happiness level, major psychological "issues," sordid childhood abuse, etc. And also what was wrong with them. They are sitting in a clinic, after all.

As I was sitting there, I remembered my waiting room thing. It’s an idea and an ongoing series of observations I have about psychiatrists’ waiting rooms. My psychiatrist’s waiting room, to be specific. Yes, I have a psychiatrist. Most people have therapists and that is kind of a non-issue. Having a medical specialist of mental illness ‘on staff’ is a bit of a different matter, I know.

Without delving into my mental inner workings too deeply, let me say that a shrink’s waiting room is, for a writer, a delicious slice of the human comedy unlike any other. Regardless of one’s level or depth of insanity, a psychiatrist’s waiting room sentences you to all kinds of ghastly diagnoses based solely on your body language.

The woman staring into space? Catatonic depression. The one absently twirling her hair? Obsessive compulsive. Any laughter? We're talking mania. Talking to yourself, even if it’s just going over the grocery list? Schizophrenia and God help you.

Trust me, I’m not the only one who thinks this. My own father understands the inescapable implication of the psychiatry waiting room.

One afternoon, he arrived to meet me for a coffee after my appointment. I walked out of the Dr’s office and there he was, reading in the waiting room. When he saw me, relief washed over his face. He stood up abruptly and yelled, ‘There you are!’ And as if I didn’t know, “I’ve been waiting for you! I’m not crazy!”

And two things struck me:

1. His yelling made him seem a little crazy.
2. Waiting rooms are powerful places.

To be honest, I felt badly for anyone sitting there when my father yelled, ‘I’m not crazy!’ into the page-flipping silence of the room. Because they, of course, are. And that is hard enough to take without being in their only place of safety, the shrink’s office, and having someone yell about it.

It’s not the only time a so-called sane person has done this kind of thing. The receptionist, Claire – on whom Screenplay Claire is based, actually – had a good one several months later.

It was a busy noon-hour with a dozen or more patients filling the chairs and the phone ringing off the hook. She put people on hold and handed out washroom keys and intake forms and took a call that was obviously someone she knew. "God," she said into the receiver. "It’s crazy in here today."

Why yes, Claire. Yes, it is.

I almost sniggered out loud, but that would've pinned me with some kind of wacky unmanageable affective disorder and frankly, I wasn’t in the mood.