“Yeah, but before you know it it’ll be cold,” she said, “and I hate cold.”
“I guess, but cold weather means the holidays are coming, and I hate the holidays.”
“Whaaat? Don’t you like visiting with your family and eating all those delicious Christmas cookies?” I said.
“Yeah, I do, but as soon as they leave, I’ll have a mess to clean up. It’ll take days to get my house back in order. And Christmas cookies? Hmph. All that butter and sugar. My cholesterol will never recover.”
No matter what I did to steer the conversation to the positive, my patient was determined to reroute it. Like a magnet with a negative charge, this lady was headed in one direction and one direction only. Even the happy news that she had no cavities didn’t brighten her smile.
“I’ll probably have five next time,” she grumbled as she made her way out the door.
“Wow,” my boss said, “her glass was certainly half empty.”
“More like half empty with a bug at the bottom,” I said, shaking my head.
We encounter negative people every day.
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