Yesterday I saw a Smart Car on Highway 98--it was so ugly it was cute. It had a personalized license plate:MADE 4 2.
It was bright yellow with a convertible top--oooooh, I want one! They look like an ATV with a frame built around it--but John Deere makes an ATV that looks a lot sturdier than a Smart Car. It was doing a respectable 60mph but when people on the road see this play car, they just have to pass it, in some kind of upsmanship I suppose--I passed it myself.

Smart Cars would be great to drive around town, but what worries me is that Highway 98 is a busy road that has 18 wheelers and many log trucks on it. Logs are not strapped down--they just bounce and jiggle and now and then you have a log truck that spills its load. God knows it would be bad enough if you were in a tank and logs fell on you, but in a Smart Car you'd be a mybloggers spot on the road.

I saw the teeny car on the way to see Dr. Dragonwyck, the dermatologist. I call him that after the Vincent Price movie. He has furniture in his office that looks like props in a gothic movie. A heavy desk with ball and claw feet and strange carvings on it; heavy dark chairs with carved backs; a room divider all carved from wood etc. I like this furniture, although it is beginning to show some wear; the doctor has had it for as long as I can remember--30 + years, and it wasn't new then.

The waiting room was full of elderly people who had skin problems from sun exposure. They, like myself, grew up working in the fields in full sun all the time. Our parents had never heard of sunscreen, and it wouldn't have mattered--you had to get out there and work anyway.

Doctor Dragonwyck is something of a Mad Hatter--he goes around holding a cannister of nitrogen (I think that's what it is) and comes into the room and sprays the offending keratosis or mole or whatever and cuts it off. I brought a body map like coroner's use and had mapped out everything on paper I wanted him to look at. He'll treat whatever you point out, but doesn't really examine his patient's to look for problems. Sigh. Maybe I expect too much from doctors. No, darn it, I don't. A full body exam should be routine, don't you think?

susil