Southern Legitimacy Statement: An old friend from college living up in Maine visited my home here in Savannah, Georgia. “Why don’t they clean all the moss off these old trees?” she asked. “Cause,’ I explained, “unlike your snow, our moss is respectful and stays outa our way.”
The Fit Test
“I have to set up for your Fit Test.” The nurse conducting the physical exam for my job application frowns, annoyed at the extra work. Fit Test? Like astronauts centrifugally spun in some amusement park contraption, how fit does a social worker need to be?
Sitting in this metal chair my butt is like baloney fresh from the fridge. Brand new social work degree in hand, this could be a real career. I imagine sweaty doctors racing down a hall pushing a gurney shouting STAT! Real life or death situations. Likely I’d be toward the back holding a clipboard. Still, it places me on the hero spectrum, sort of.
“Be patient, you’re almost done,” the nurse scolds. “Mary” is printed on the plastic rectangle pinned just above her cold heart. So far, my fidgeting, grunting, looking at my watch, has not won me Mary’s love and respect. This process started at 8 am, it is now late afternoon. I’ve given blood, urine, filled out repetitive forms, had a chest x-ray, my back thumped like testing a melon, coughed as a stethoscope to my heart revealed, “Your heartbeat’s a bit fast.” Oh, really? Why might that be?
“Okay, ready for your Fit Test?”
No idea how to answer that question, I follow Mary down the airless hospital hallway. Brandishing more keys than a jailer, she jingles the right key into the lock. As lights blink the room into existence, I am disappointed. The usual off-white cabinets, examination table, metal chair. I take my usual seat, even colder than the last. Mary digs around in a drawer, pulls out and hands me what looks like a WWI gas mask. “Put it on.”
A dexterity test? A test to determine my ability to comprehend and manipulate all the rubbery double straps needed to fasten this gadget over my face? I succeed at the task, resenting its crunch against my carefully combed beard, something I let grow out in my two years of graduate school that requires daily grooming like a fussy little dog. Well strapped in, having done so without delay or confusion, I speak into the mask “Did I pass?”
Ignoring me, Mary removes an atomizer from another drawer, holds it up high and begins spritzing the air around me as if selling perfume at the Macy’s cosmetics counter.
“Smell that?” Mary smiles, “Smell nice?”
An olfactory examination? I consider her question carefully, offering “It has a strong but pleasant citrus quality,” adding, “and, is that a trace of honeysuckle?”
“You failed.” Mary’s tone is laced with satisfaction.
Wait. Fit-Test. “You were testing how well the mask fits!”
Mary rolls her eyes; she’s had her fill of geniuses like me.
“You gotta lose you-know-what,” she says, gesturing toward my chin and cheeks. Is it rude to say beard? “I don’t like them anyway,” Mary finishes, pointing me toward the door. Does she mean beards, or people in general?
Having failed the Fit Test, I must wait a week to retake the test. I know better than to ask the logic of waiting a week—a rule based exclusively on the sadistic joy of pointless bureaucracy that I very much hope to soon be a part of.
Seven days later I march into the nurse’s office, my face shorn down from a woodsman’s bush to a Sigmund Freud goatee.
“Hello Mary, I am ready for the Fit Test.”
Arms crossed, clearly not happy with my facial hair solution, “That’s Nurse Mary, to you,” she says. We walk down the hall to the same room for my fitting. Again, the mask, again the spritzing, seemingly aimed directly toward my eyes.
“Well, what do you smell?”
This time it is a delicious lavender vanilla mix, with just a hint of mint. Where do they get these fragrances? I stay silent, take my time, look at Mary dead on.
“It smells like………” I cock my head back and forth as if seeking something, trying to find the right words. Mary’s breathing grows heavy, eager, her eyes sparkle in anticipation of my failure.
“Like, like….it smells exactly like…like nothing, yes, it smells like total nothingness. If nothing smelled it would smell like what I am absolutely right now not smelling. At all.”
“All right, all right, that’s enough” Mary says, “you pass.” Bruskly, she yanks the mask off my face, hoping, I think, to remove some of my remaining facial hair.
Exiting the room I hear her parting words, “Good luck, you’ll need it.”
