Taking the piss

There was a queue building behind me. I was annoying myself, just like I got annoyed when others fumbled for their payment cards at the counter. Surely, if you have to wait for five minutes to get served, you can find your card before you get to the till, not, when you get to the till. I had made the schoolboy mistake, thinking that my blockbuster card was my payment card. Keys on counter. Wallet on counter. Half a displaced chewing gum on the counter. Urine sample on counter. Pen on counter. Urine sample on counter? Shit. Right before me, right before the man at the counter, and right in front of the queue of ten work people, lay my specimen B plastic bottle of piss. I’ll get my coat.

Somehow behaviour like this has the habit of following me around. There was the first day at work, when my pen exploded in my pocket, prompting a fresh blue handshake with the new boss. Or the time I rushed to get changed on my second day at work, in the girls toilets. But this today seemed to eclipse all those moments. As a walked away, I could feel the thoughts. A guy who walks around with a urine sample in his pocket. Some people have key rings, others have diaries, some have the audacity to have a mobile phone. Other people have small plastic containers of piss. Admittedly not orange piss, but piss never the less.

As I left for work that morning I made my checks. Medial card, new patient forms, urine sample. “Mr Cooper, your appointment is next Monday”. Trying to understand my date confusion, I turned around, set off for work, and put the sample in my pocket.