by Jodie Leidecker

Created on: May 11, 2009

Beautiful People Should Not Check My Health

Good-looking people make me nervous so I was disconcerted when I showed up at a drugstore for a free health screening and was met by a man who could have been a model. I just wanted to check my blood sugar but the man's partner told me to have everything done since it only took seven minutes. I nodded blankly and my face turned red. Trying to stand up straight and walk at the same time, I parked my bike out of the way. I hoped there wasn't any of the leftover torte I had just crammed down my throat stuck in my teeth.

The model, muscles bulging, took my personal information on a handheld thingie and asked me to sign my initials several times. I shakily took the pen and scrawled them on the screen. I pretended he really wanted my phone number when he asked for it and my address, too. I noticed myself running my hands through my hair as I do when I am edgy, but it's like a tic. Once I start, I can't stop. I tried to look around and seem nonchalant, but he kept asking me questions about myself, his muscles kept bulging, and I didn't have anything else to look at, anyway, since we were at an ugly intersection in town.

School buses full of teenagers kept going by and yelling obscenities out the windows at me and the elderly people who had gathered there. It was the elderly people, the model, and me. "Looks like I'm the youngest person getting the screening," I said, keeping my eyes averted in a way that I hoped didn't look too bizarre. The model just looked at me. "Yeah," he said, "right now, it seems like it." He handed me a paper and tried to give me a free reusable shopping bag with the store's logo, but I didn't want to look like I was looking for handouts so I turned it down flat. "No, thanks, I don't want it," I said, touching my hair for the hundredth time. "Ok," he said, "you can go on in," pointing to the bus where I would get my blood drawn.

"I can go in in?" I asked, accidentally repeating words in my panicky state. "Sure," he said, looking at me strangely. I was glad to get away from him, but as soon as I got on the bus, there were more handsome young men to take my blood and give me the other tests. I nearly lost it when a beefy and tan 25 year-old told me he was going to measure my waist circumference. "Like hell you are!" I wanted to shout, but he tricked me into holding the body composition machine out in front of me and whipped the measuring tape around me so fast I couldn't

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