How do you spell sofa?

I had an appointment with an ophthalmologist today, chemo can cause trouble with your eyes, and while there is no history of cancer in my family, there is history of certain eyeball conditions. I have undergone countless medical procedures, and am very good at remaining calm and detached, but eyeballs and the examination thereof, give me the deluxe hee-bee-gee-bees {x10}. I can't watch anyone put in contact lenses, my eyes water if someone else has red eyes and the doctor's plastic eyeball model made me queasy. But nothing was scarier than the waiting room before my appointment.

The waiting room was crowded with a disproportionate number of morbidly obese, I don't mean overweight, I mean seriously, obese, very unhealthy individuals. After watching Michelle Bachman on the news ranting about Obamacare killing innocent babies and their little old nana's, I've become so disgusted with the state of things that I really can't stand it. I'm trying to be the apathetic individual that is at the root of so many problems, but sometimes, it's a matter of self-preservation, It's too insane, too depressing, I can't believe how low our national discourse has gone, and I thought I could dwell in my little blue state bubble for a bit. A woman across the room asked loudly "how do you spell sofa?", she repeated it a few times and her friend looked at her quizzically. I thought maybe she was doing a crossword puzzle and an answer was "sofa",admittedly, pretty shocked she needed help spelling it. Then she said to her friend "you know, sofa, the stuff they put in antibiotics, I'm allergic to," her friend replied "oh suffa, that's S U F A." Oh sulphur, you crazy chemical you, which I've learned since, has two acceptable spellings, Sulphur and Sulfur, both of which alas, have an "r" at the end. If you don't want to say the R, that's fine by me, but you just can't deny it's existence.

Right then, the ever-present wall mounted t.v. cut to news, of course of the government shutdown. The woman next to me hollered to the whole room, our small, intimate waiting room, that if we had to have Obamacare, the Congress should have to have it too. Maybe I should have kept quiet, but I aired on the side of polite political discourse, national conversation, and I explained, after someone else agreed with her, that the Affordable Care Act wasn't something you had to have, it was something that would be there for those who chose to utilize it. Congresspeople have employer arranged health insurance, so they don't need the assistance of the ACA, but that many people don't have employer coverage. I mentioned the self-employed, people who work for small businesses, people who work part-time, that the ACA allowed them access to an array of different plans, subsidized according to income, from which they could not be excluded for preexisting conditions, women would be charged the same as men, folks couldn't be dropped if they got sick, all good things that are not available to millions of people currently. And yes, people would be required to purchase at least minimal coverage, just as the government makes us buy auto insurance in case we damage someone's car or hurt someone, minimal coverage would mean that the rates of the paying, wouldn't skyrocket to pay for the care of the uninsured.

The woman insisted to me that despite having had cancer and diabetes and myriad other health issues she'd never been denied insurance, never, ever, and her rates were what she considered affordable and that Obamacare had already ruined her insurance. She was now being denied a lifesaving medication she needs every day because of Obamacare. I mentioned that the law only went into effect yesterday and didn't affect anyones current coverage, but that didn't convince her. Her insurance was great and she didn't need the government interfering with, you know it, you know it's coming, her Medicare.

And it went downhill from there.