Article: 178442 of talk.bizarre
From: brett@cthulu.bu.edu (Evolve or Perish)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: REPOST: a visit to the ontologist
Date: 1 Dec 1994 08:43:27 GMT
Organization: The Garden of Arcane Delights
Lines: 46
Message-ID: <3bk2bf$llb@news.bu.edu>
Summary: more angst-free fluff
Keywords: very early post, maybe even my first
Status: O



I still remember my first visit to the ontologist...

Oh, of course I didn't think I needed to go. I was nine, and
what could be dorkier than one of those awkward appliances?

But I felt the same way about my braces, and I guess it's a
good thing I wasn't allowed to take charge of my life at that
age.

I don't remember what the original problem was - something to 
do with the charges of my component particles, I think.
Anyway, it was causing trouble on the playground. The other
kids would explode whenever they came into contact with me.
I thought this was pretty cool, but there'd been complaints...

I got to miss school the day of the appointment. The office
was in one of those glass buildings - the kind with atriums
in the center and all the office names are in tiny print on
the tinted glass doors. I'd been pretty calm all morning, 
but I remember being terrified as soon as I walked into the 
waiting room. It wasn't the fact that I was there in the 
office - the muzak, the plastic ferns, and the ancient Sports
Illustrated magazines were all quite familiar from all of
Mom's doctor appointments before she had Katie, my baby
sister. What scared me were the people in the waiting room.

One of them - a gray-haired man in a suit - was surrounded
by some sort of gravitational distortion. I could feel
*pulled* toward him, but fortunately I was too heavy to
join the pens, coins, and scraps of paper that covered him.
Then there was a young black woman - well, I don't know if
she was African-American or not. You see, she was unable to
reflect light. And there was one poor person who had been
wheeled into the office in a magnetic bottle. I never did
find out what was wrong with him, or if he ever got any
better.

Mom and I sat down, and I stared at the covers of the magazines.

Too soon, my name was called.


b r e t t 
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