A day in the life of a carp

Today, we went in for Tim's blood draw. We will see the doctor next Friday for the results.
Everyone that works at the myeloma dept. at this hospital could not be nicer. They are always
smiling and polite. I sometimes think that they must have employee meetings where they are
told by their bosses that they had better behave this way towards the patients OR ELSE. I've even thought that they must get to thinking the old, "there but for the grace of God, go I" type of thing being around cancer patients all day, so they have that grateful thing going on all the time. I know Tim's doc, in his sometimes tackless manner, told us once that myeloma is a cruddy disease and he walks out of work often thinking he's glad he doesn't have it. Thanks doc. That's an obvious piece of information we didn't need put into words. But there is one guy whose personality stands in stark contrast to everyone else there. Dino. He spends his days taking blood all day. He takes blood, receives 24 hour urine
samples and walks them across the hall. Boring job, I admit, but gosh, make the best of it pal.
It's also pretty low stress too. You don't have to make life or death treatment decisions. You don't have to give people bad news. I swear he just has no personality and always looks like
he's just a little miffed about something. He speaks in a monotone. In 3 1/2 years, I don't know if I have EVER seen him smile. You try to make conversation and show some interest in him and you get one word answers. Today, Tim sits down for his draw and it goes like this:
Denise:How long have you been doing this?
Dino: Too long.
Uncomfortable silence thinking he is going to give me the real answer. He doesn't.
Tim:Did you get away anywhere for vacation this summer?
Dino: Not really. My wife gave birth.
Waiting for details that never come. Didn't even smile when he said this about having another child.
Denise: OH that's great, what did you have?
Dino: A boy
Waiting for more details and maybe a smirk or something.
Denise: How nice. One of each now(he has a girl). What did you name him?
Dino: Luca
Denise: Ah yes, very italian(goes with Dino of course).
Dino: Yup
Waiting for more details. Anything. A glimpse of emotion. Nothing.
Tim: When was he born.
Dino: the fourth of July
Tim and Denise: OH How cool!
Dino: grunt
For those non-USA'ers the 4th of July is our Independance day which is when we apparently told England, "You're not the boss of us. We can do a great job of screwing everything up all by ourselves."(and we did)
Then Dino asked Tim the same thing he always does when he realizes he's being asked to partake in conversation.
Dino: How's business?
Tim goes into his medium, short version of this answer and I am always shocked that Dino asks him this 'cause Dino got an estimate from Tim when he bought a house a few years ago
but went with a cheap(what we call hacker) flooring company instead.
By this time we were done and said our good-byes but I swear I have never met a duller, more un-friendly guy. I mean he had a baby for heaven's sake and you have to pull it all out of him like he's not even that impressed or happy about it. I said something joking around one day to
the doc during Tim's appt. and they laughed at the idea I'd met carp with more personality but they agreed. He's one heckuva Eeyore for sure. I feel like shaking him sometimes and reminding him that this ain't no picnic for the folks on the other side of that needle either and
he could perk up just a little. Wonder what his wife is like. I get to feeling mopey just being around him for 5 minutes. He's a disgrace to
us Italians. Heck, I'm only a quarter Italian and I can barely wait on a line without striking up
a conversation with someone. This guy needs some happy pills or something.