No.

That's right. I said it. No. Did I stutter? No. See, now it's both repetition and the answer to my previous question, understand? No. You don't. You have no fucking clue. No. Don't even- NO.

NO.

If I'm feeling saucy, maybe I'll even through in a nope. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Non. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

Apparently, my sauciness manifested itself IN FRENCH. It's very unpredictable like that. Tempted as I am to just keep writing these negative responses over and over, I feel like I should maybe explain a bit.

I like trivia. I'm not going to say that I love it,  because if you've ever seen me in the heat of battle, it's not pretty.

"My empire of useless facts descends upon you! Our questions will blot out the sun!" "Then we will answer them in the shade. Most likely with beer, because you expect us to do this sober? Show some respect, son."

 But, you know, despite all the stress and the near table flips, I usually have a pretty good time. I have some beers, I answer some questions, and I curse the mothers of my enemies for their fecundity and obvious promiscuity. I've made friends and met new people through trivia. It has been pointed out that it is my hobby, and while I don't think it's entirely accurate, it's also not too far off.

Tonight, though. No. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no non no no no no no No NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

Let's face it- that was mostly in here for this little guy.

 And, yes, it's not as funny as it would be vocally, because you can probably see the strand of no coming up from the depths of the blog and you can just skim through, as opposed to a movie or something like that where it's funny after three nos, incredibly dumb after seven nos, and then ABSOLUTELY FUCKING HILARIOUS somewhere around twenty. My point still remains. No.

In addition to my tendency to go play trivia and wile away the hours (as opposed to conferring with the flowers, because I do have a brain and find the notion of conferring with the flowers to be a Sunday afternoon activity between experiments and/or bourbons)

"The application of ethyl alcohol to investigators increases endorphin release and perceived satisfaction despite diminished outcomes." Or some shit like that. I'm too sober for this shit.

In addition to that tendency (no, the sentence doesn't get to end), I have my whole doctor doctor thing. One day, I will be able to give you the news about your bad case of loving blues. Unfortunately, there are no current oral medications that are able to alleviate your symptoms, so we will be trying some alternative therapies for palliative care.

Because I'm not a full on doctor doctor yet, I do what I do to pay my dues.

"Oh, are you?" That doesn't even apply, Schwartzman. Get that bush league bullshit out of here.

Part of these dues (to me) entails going to free clinics. They mean a lot to me, and I'm glad that I can participate. I get to work on my ability to diagnose and treat patients (which is currently pretty abysmal, I tell you what), and the patients get some medical care on the cheap. I mean, it's not the most state of the art medical care, and a lot of it is band aids for bigger problems, but it's still worth doing. A couple of hours every few weeks and you can get that nice holier than thou glow to hold you over until next time.

Even better than a hybrid (though not quite to the degree of Macs).

And, yeah, a lot of the folks are there for med refills or blood pressure checks or vague pain that we really can't do anything to fix. Hold on. I need a beverage. And having obtained that, I need some goddamned pretzels, because you know what? Fuck the renin-angiotensin system. I need some goddamned pretzels.

Pretzels: fucking metal as shit.

Okay, fine. They're the little pretzel nibblet popper things. You know. Combos without the cheese, because cheese is bad for you. Duh.

Once again, quick thinking and good old fashioned American knowhow thwarts the Listeria League. Thankfully for our expectant mothers, Rob is only too happy to do his duty in protecting your children from neonatal infections. Well, Listeria, at least. Toxoplasmosis just means you shouldn't have cats.

The beverage, though? Milk. Yeah, that's right. Vitamin D and calcium. Maybe some protein in there too. Yeah. Builds strong bones. Like a boss. You know how it do. Oh, what's that? Not zazzy enough for you? You want fucking zazzy? I don't think you can handle it. All right, fuckface, you want some goddamned pizzazz in this razzmatazz over here? How about some goddamned chocolate syrup all mixed up in that milk? Yeah, that's some fucking theobromine right there. Kills dogs. Not people, though. That's fucked up. Why are we talking about killing dogs? What the fuck is wrong with you?

"Why you gotta play me like that, bro?"

Anyway, yes. Free clinics. See, today, I was supposed to work one of these things. I wasn't looking forward to it too much, because there are other things I could do on a Thursday evening, such as trivia (and other educational activities).

For example, an in depth study of anti-Hitler tactics.

But, hey, helping people, right? Well, I get to the clinic on time, having picked up a little bit of Taco Bell for dinner, because, dammit, I'm a doctor in training sort of, not a dietician. Having duly scarfed my dinner, I head towards the clinic, only to find the doors locked and the lights off. Now, there's supposed to be someone running the clinic who should have been there by now. As you may have realized from this story and the backgrounds and the ample use of the word no (NO), that person is not there. The attending physician is not there (but, then, they get there a little later to minimize their downtime so students can learn and shit). Well, this is unfortunate. I told folks I'd be at trivia late and would have the house cash, and now I need to worry about getting us into the clinic so we can start and therefore can't check my phone and let them know. Well, I suppose I'd better start unloading the inventory that is the back of my car and devise a cunning plan to effect ingress into the establish- oh. Okay. There's a dude with keys (not part of the clinic, mind you, but still. Keys. They get you into things.), and he's letting us in.

Well, at this point, we're about fifteen minutes behind our normal start time to get done in two hours so I can go do trivia. They're getting patients signed in and entered into the system, and hopefully we'll be up and running soon. And sure enough, we are.

Now, I'm not going to go into details about my patients, because that would be wrong, and that would get HIPAA on my ass.

Contrary to preachy environmental shows, this is the most dangerous mammal, and it does not abide breaches in confidentiality.

One thing I will say about free clinic patients in general is that they like to talk. A lot of times, they need someone to talk to, if only to vent. That's fine. I can get behind that. Then, thirty minutes later, when we're hearing about the third surgery your pet squirrel had to have to fix its goiter, I will get antsy and want to push things right the fuck along.

In our case, I think I got to check my phone around 9 o'clock. Here are some sample messages I received while I was busy playing doctor.

"Trivia?!?"

"Hey, where are you?"

"Rob, did you die?"

"Get your fat ass over here!!"

"Dammit. Our tab is in my name. Cut short your charity!!!"

Of course, checking my phone does not mean that I was done with clinic. Hahaha no. After seeing another patient and writing the fastest note ever (channeling the Pinball Wizard certainly helps), we finally got out of the clinic at 11, shortly after trivia had ended. You know, two and a half hours after the two hour clinic was supposed to end.

Let me say this.

Free clinics. You're wonderful. I think you're a lot of fun, and we do some good work together. But if you ever- EVER- come between trivia and me again, I will knife you in the face. Then I will stitch it up, because if we're anthropromorphizing you, I get to have all the doctor skills I want.

And sure, I get to look like Neil Patrick Harris.

Now, if you'll excuse me, Free clinics, SOME of us have to go to work in the morning.