WHAT THE #?*%@! DID SHE SAY?

Once a year, I get a few days by myself to go visit my sister Sherry in Las Vegas.  We also have a home there that we rent out, so I check on it, but the main reason I have gone the past few years is due to the Academy of Country Music Awards being hosted in Vegas.  There are 2 nights of free concerts as well as the ACM "Fan Jam" that runs simultaneously with the ACM Awards.  Friday and Saturday night were madhouses... tens of thousands of people packed Fremont Street to see such acts as Hunter Hayes, Scotty McCreery, Jana Kramer, Luke Bryan, Eli Young Band and Eric Church.  In my opinion this year's headliners (Church and Bryan) were way too big for Fremont Street's britches.  There were way too many people, and I am a tiny little woman (only 4'10"), but I came out unscathed when battling the masses.

Battling the winds on Sunday?  That was another story.  When we checked into our hotel, we met a woman with the coolest manicure I'd ever seen, so I asked her to get us in touch with her nail lady.  She did, and on Sunday, we left the "nice part of town" and headed to get a manicure.  While we were sitting in the car waiting for the nail lady to arrive, I'd had my car door open.  Sherry suggested this was not the best part of town to have the doors unlocked, let alone open, so she suggested I shut my door.  Then WHAM!  I shut it alright... on my toe!!!!!!!!  YOWZA did that hurt!  I barely pulled on the door... the 60+ MPH winds simply helped the door shut faster... and harder... on my toe!

So we proceed to get our nails done, and in the course of that hour, my entire leg goes numb up to the knee.  I figure I should go get it checked out, but our hospital copay is something ridiculous, like $500 or $1000, so we drive to and from urgent care places until we find one that accepts my insurance.  As I'm checking in with this nice young lady, I mention that I like her glasses.

"Thanks", she says.  "They were $9 at Walmart".

"Wow, that's cheap, I never find frames I like that cheap.  I can't believe you got them at Walmart!".  I continued, "Plus, I have such a small face, I usually have to buy kids glasses".

"Yeah, my sister has a really tiny face too", she replied.  "Once she got a pair of glasses that were way too small for her face.  She called them her 'Down syndrome glasses'".

HER WHAT????  SHE CALLED THEM HER WHAT!!!!!!!

In my mind I'm ready to kick butt, but then I remember my foot is so sore I couldn't kick anything if I wanted to.  So I responded simply by saying, "Oh, funny you should say that, I have a child with Down synndrome".

SILENCE.

Not another word was said to me by this woman unless it was medically related.

I spent the next few hours in the waiting room trying to think of anything other than what this girl said to me and how to handle it.  Luckily, my toe was throbbing.  And there was a show about Candy Montgomery, the woman who chopped up another lady in Wiley, TX, about 30 years ago.  It intrigued me very much so because my husband grew up in a neighboring town to Wiley, TX.

Anyway, how do you handle a comment like that? 

By the time I got to see the doctor, I had calmed down.  I was so sick of sitting in that urgent care, I was in pain and I was missing the ACM's and the Fan Jam.  Before the doctor left the room for the final time, I let him know what she said to me and that I had a child with Down syndrome, and how I felt the comment was inappropriate in any context, but especially so in a medical environment.  I was hoping he would have a conversation with her about her language but that I thought she was really nice and ought not be "punished" for her phrasing.  She was young enough that I really thought she would take constructive criticism well, but she also was very spunky, so I was afraid any punishment would just piss her off.

I feel I handled this situation to the best of my ability.  How would you handle it?

The rest of my vacation was relaxing, mostly because I couldn't walk... I spent more time in front of the slot machines with a beer in my hand and sitting at the sushi bar than I thought I would, but I came home having spent $100 for the entire 5 days.  I'm not complaining about that!