“Can I ask why you’re going to the medical campus?” my ride-share driver asked this morning. “Do you work there?”
We’d already established that he lived one street over from mine with his physician wife, and that we shopped at the same Aldi and Costco and shared several favorite neighborhood restaurants. Next we covered conspiracy theories, and in the course of that conversation — as a child of the ’60s and ’70s, he’s comfortable with questions about the moon landing (though he doesn’t doubt it himself); it’s flat-Earthers he finds the most puzzling — agreed that one of the unsung benefits of dwelling in our community was that anti-science beliefs are anathema to most of our neighbors.
He ran down a list of obvious reasons: the high percentage of residents who work in medicine or other academic fields; a bustling Asian community that’s home to many scientists and physicians (his wife among them, he noted); and — he glanced in the rearview mirror as he assured me he wasn’t about to get political — a large Jewish population. “Jewish families place a very high premium on education,” he told me, and I nodded without comment, pleased he hadn’t said “the Jews” or volunteered his thoughts on Israel.
It was as we approached the medical campus that he asked what I was doing there. I was still groggy, having risen at 5:30 am (after a night of fitful sleep) to prepare for my appointment, and maybe that’s why I didn’t expect what happened next.
“I’m going for physical therapy,” I replied.
“Were you injured?”
“No, it’s for early-onset Parkinson’s.”
“That’s tough,” he said. “And I saw your shirt and it supports such a great cause.”
I looked down at myself and assumed he was fishing for a tip. Normally I wear jeans or gray pants and a button-down, but for PT I’d grabbed the most innocuous t-shirt in my dresser, ignoring the jokey Four Seasons Total Landscaping, the classic Yo Semite, and old campaign shirts in favor of a generic freebie from an IBD research project. You’d have to read it pretty closely to know what it was about, as he’d apparently done judging by what he said next.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to recommend something that might help with your conditions.”
I braced myself for the usual crap about prayer or diet (or pot and positive thinking, or some other grift).
“It’s Forks Over Knives, a movie you can stream. Have you heard of it?”
It could’ve been worse — he could’ve suggested What the Health or Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, which algorithms usually promote alongside Forks Over Knives — but I was ready to exit his car.
“I’ll have to check it out,” I told him as I unbuckled my seat belt, because that was simpler than saying what I really thought of all the books, ‘documentaries’ (they’re rarely anything of the sort) and podcasts that are part of the same Forks Over Knives cottage industry. The truth was I’d watched it myself during a particularly painful, distant time in my life. Back then, I was so desperate to escape the shackles of my stupid lifelong diseases that I was briefly vulnerable to pseudoscientific come-ons from online outlets promoting alternative health gobbledygook.
Suffice to say, I don’t think too highly of it (or anyone who preaches its gospel to a captive audience in what was, for the driver, a professional setting), so I was relieved to be picked up by a grumpy-looking woman in a Mazda when my appointment was over.* Opening her door, I was greeted by the chorus of the unedited version of Akon’s “I Wanna Love You.”** Some would argue that’s unprofessional on a grander scale than the inquisitive vegan’s transgressions, but as I listened to Snoop Dogg’s vulgar rap and noticed school portraits of her children taped neatly to the dashboard, I wanted to laugh. As long as she didn’t steer us off a cliff or suggest I’m the cause of my diseases, she’d earn a generous tip.
* When I told Crankenstein about his pitch, she laughed and asked “Did you tell him a vegan lifestyle’s not compatible with your diseased j-pouch?” Aside from a slice of pepperoni or sausage pizza a couple times a year, and an annual thin-sliced roast beef sandwich, I don’t eat meat. But a mostly vegetarian diet has never improved my health; it’s my preference for other reasons. And you’ll pry cheese — real cheese — from my cold dead hands, even if I’m less passionate about it than Crankenstein. If she had to choose a life without me or without cheese, I wouldn’t even wait for her decision; I’d silently pack my bags.
** If you need an Akon refresher, since I’m pretty sure only one or two of you works the pole, here’s your choice of the clean edit or the explicit edit. (That’s mostly a Crankenstein joke, she calls optional weekend shifts “working the IV pole.”)