The Vegetarian

I was twenty minutes early for my 4:45 appointment with the psychiatrist. I sat in my car and opened the Meetup app on my phone to see if anything interesting was coming up for book club. I saw that the nonfiction book club was going to read “All The President’s Men” and the fiction club was going to read “The Vegetarian”.

By then it was 4:30 and I walked into the office. Dr Z came out. I said “I’m fifteen minutes early,” and she said “That’s OK, I will see you now.”

She asked how I was doing. I said I’m doing well, and sleeping through the night on the current med. She said, “Good” and wrote a refill prescription and handed it to me. And she gave me a followup appointment for three months out. In all of less than a minute, I was done. My 4:45 appointment was done at 4:31.

My yoga class, which is in the same building as my shrink, wasn’t scheduled to start until 6:15. I had time to kill, so I walked to the Mission Viejo library, which is just across the street.

I went to the online catalog and looked up “All The President’s Men”. Because I’m a non-fiction kind of guy. Two copies, both out. So I looked for “The Vegetarian.” One copy, on the shelves. Woohoo!

I found the book and sat down and started reading it. Interesting book. It was written by a woman from the point of view of a man, telling the story of his wife. The wife apparently had horrible nightmares that prompted her to become a vegetarian.

I really liked the writing style, and in no time I read about five pages into the book. I decided to keep the book and try to finish it for book club, which is exactly one week out. Only 188 pages. I think I can do it.

While I was reading, a young Asian woman walked up to me and said, “Is that ‘The Vegetarian’?” I said, “Yes, it is!” And she said, “Oh my God! I was just looking for that book!”

If I were someone else, this might have been the start of a new romance. Instead, my thought was “What luck! If I had arrived at the library ten minutes later, the one copy would have already been out!”

I felt a blog post coming on. I checked out the book and walked over to Yoga Works, checked in, changed into my yoga gear, and sat down on a chair in the lobby. And I took out my phone and typed up this post with my two thumbs. Finished just in time for yoga class.