Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - I am a Venezuelan doctor....

Wednesday, September 13, 2006
I am a Venezuelan doctor....
I'm sure if you've talked to me in the past month I've told you that I am now a Venezuelan doctor. There's a relatively long story behind this, but I'll try to keep it to a minimum. The entire Venezuelan experience was quite eye opening....................as much as I wanted to shut them. Keep in mind all of these events happend right here in our nations capital. This also doubles as PanAm Part 3.
So last time we left off I was about to tell you what kind of culture shock came when the track and field segment of the PanAm games began. Each country/team had a tent or tents set up for their athletes to congregate under between events to keep out of the sun and relax during the day. Since there were only four teams, the tents were lined up on one side of the track side by side. I parked my gator between the US tent and the Venezuela tent. Not paying much attention to the uniforms of anyone I went about my business. Set up the water, ice, checked with officials and such. Came back over to the tent side and the first heat for track events was being called. I look towards the starting line and my eyes nearly bugged outta my head. A girl from Venezuela had her ass (literally) hanging out of her shorts. The shorts were cut so unbelieveably short that she had no choice but to wear them as a thong so that they only covered the top half of her butt, and not any portion of the lower half........it was just hanging out there for the world to see. This was shocking to say the least as the US, Mexico, and Canada girls all had regular shorts on. I thought, perhaps this was just one girl whose shorts didn't fit right or something. I decided to investigate further, so I went in search of more Venezuelan girls. To my amazement each and everyone had on these thong-shorts. Little girls, age 10-16ish. Could not believe it. I had to confer with someone else. I made my way over to the Canadian tent to ask one of their Athletic Trainers what he thought. He was too standing in amazement as I approached him and asked "do you see what I see?" "Unreal," was his reply. My next thought was to see the reaction of the Venezuelan coaches. Surely they would think this was inappropriate dress and try to cover the children. Ah, but I was so wrong. I find a coach talking to a girl before a race with nothing to indicate that there was any sort of problem with the uniform. The entire team standing around with their little buns hanging out for the world to see. The boys, mind you, were wearing wrestling style singlets. None of their parts were hanging out for the world to see (not to say that a singlet leaves anything to the imagination).
I'll have to say that the worst part of the entire situation was when one of the Venezuelan boys had his singlet top down around his waist because he was trying to cool off. Did not look inappropriate in the slightest; however, an official came over and told him that he could not have the top down, that he must keep it on at all times. This, and yet the girls could walk around with their buns hanging out. I just don't get it.
Now on to how I became a Venezuelan doctor. So, each of the teams had their own medical staff of some sort. The US had myself and Lonnie, the Canadians had an physiotherapist and two athletic therapists (that's a Canadian Athletic Trainer), and Mexico had a doctor. Venezuela, however, had nobody. Inevitably, I became their medical staff. Thankfully there weren't many of them and none of them were hurt badly, but nonetheless, anytime they needed something they would come to me and say, "doctor, doctor." They would bring me to the injured athlete and say, "doctor, doctor." I would help the athlete with whatever the problem was and be on my way. This went on for two days, thus dubbing me "Venezuelan doctor." I thought this could be a viable career option for me somewhere in the future :) Until then I'll keep my fingers crossed for Biomedical Writer for Lockheed Martin or the Residency Coordinator for Opthomology at GWMFA.