Today, I had my annual exam. To be more specific, my annual female exam.

I haven't had a steady gynecologist in years. Too much moving around, procrastinating and lack of sexual activity. Let's face it - when you're not having sex, and not in pressing need of some form of birth control, you don't think much about OB GYN matters.

Still, something reminded me the other day that I had not seen one for a while. I chose a doctor off our provider list, the only one who practiced in the zip code in which I live, and in which I intended to live over the course of several such annual exams. Good enough.

She was a pleasant woman. A bit too folksy for my taste. The actual exam was delayed in favor of chitchat, a getting-to-know-you sit down with the doc that I found an annoying waste of time.

This came after I filled out the paperwork, submitted a urine sample, was ushered to a room, waited 15 minutes and answered the questions of an intern nurse whose supervisor silently observed. By this time, I was more than ready to have the transaction completed.

But this was not to be.

"Here's your gown," the nurse told me. "But don't put it on yet. First, the doctor wants to talk to you."

I waited another 10 minutes, and the smiling doctor, who appeared to be about my age, breezed into the room. I was, by this time, sitting in the chair, a decidedly more dignified posture than sitting on the exam table, legs swinging childlike from its edge.

Dr. Gibson pulled up a chair close to mine. She did not ask me if I had any special concerns, how often or if I was sexually active or if my periods were troublesome. Those questions came later, during the exam. Instead, she asked me how I was.

"What do you do for a living?" she asked, her expression reflecting great interest when I told her marketing.

I knew this was feigned. Marketing on its face, since it encompasses such a wide array of career possibilities, is not fascinating. She asked who my employer was and, once again, raised her eyebrows and smiled as though impressed.

"And what does that involve?"

My smile was thin, though I tried my hardest to make it genuine. All I wanted was to have her in my body and out, as quickly as possible.

I suppose this is a modern-day trend, an attempt to make the doctor seem more human and to ease the patient. But doctors like this one see so many patients, so many of them on only an annual basis, that her interest could not possibly have been genuine. Nor did it have to be.

"Let's drop the pretense. Here is what we are to one another," I longed to say. "You: doctor. Me: Vagina. Any questions?"

I wanted to hear her inquiring not about my career and family life, but to my cervix.

Barring that, the only sound I desired was the snap of latex as she donned her gloves and got down to business.

"I see you have a little boy," she persisted. "Oh! Not so little really."

"No," I said. "No. He's not."

Either the conversation was completed to her satisfaction or she picked up on my decided lack of enthusiasm - or concluded I was PMSing - because Dr. Gipson finally gave me the order for which I'd been waiting.

"Put on your gown and I'll be right back."

With a relief, I shrugged out of my own clothes and into the paper-thin cotton gown.

When she returned, the doc was ready to work.

Partway through the exam, with her hand in a space only penises were meant to go, she paused.

"Hmm," she said. "You're so thin. I can't tell if this is an ovary or a fibroid."

Her brow furrowed. She rooted around some more. It did not hurt, but it was not exactly pleasant either. It seemed to me an ovary and a fibroid should be distinctly different in feel, but since I had never explored innards, and she did so regularly, who was I to say?

"Put your hand here, on your stomach," she said, directing me to a spot just west of my belly button. "Press right there. You feel that."

Her hand pushed up from inside me, into the palm of the hand that rested on my tummy.

"That bump ... feel it?"

This was weird indeed. But I thought perhaps, just maybe, I felt something. I said yes, of course, I certainly did. I'd have said almost anything to speed this stage of the exam along.

"If it's a fibroid, it's not at a worrisome stage," she said. "We'll just check it again next year."

Finally, I was free to sit up and, immediately, cross my legs.

The doctor again gave me her Girl-Scout-mom-next-door smile. "Everything looks great," she said.

Almost against my will, sarcastic thoughts swirled through my mind. Was that a compliment? Could it be that my female parts were better and healthier looking than those of other women? I tried to think of an appropriate response, but none came.

Dr. Gibson washed her hands and wrote me a prescription for a mammogram. Then she was gone, and I was relieved.

I hope my new gynecologist's technique does not gain popularity. She is not my enemy, but neither is she my friend. An annual exam is business. Plain and simple.

My advice to dear Dr. Gibson and her well-meaning colleagues: Save the chitchat. Do the job at hand. Do it well, and do it fast.

And pass that along to the staff at the breast center. STAT.

The call came as we were stuck in traffic. A request for lunch from a man I'd been interested in for six months.

My co-worker, who was driving the car, quickly picked up on who was on the other end of my phone, and what he wanted. I looked at her. She nodded yes. I shook my head no.

"Can I call you back in about three minutes and let you know?"

He sounded a bit taken aback, but agreed.

She and I were on our way back into Denver from a morning's work at a medical clinic far north of the city. The two of us carpooled regularly to our jaunts at the five clinics. We were done for the day, and she was driving me back to my car.

When two women spend hours in a car together, it's almost inevitable that they open up to one another. My co-worker and I know one another's sordid and happy histories, current family and friendship issues, moods and wardrobes.

She knew me so well that before I hung up the phone, she knew who had called and what he had asked.

"He wants me to meet him downtown for lunch," I said. "Look at me!"

I pulled down the visor on the passenger's side and looked in the mirror. "I can't go! I didn't sleep well last night. I have circles under my eyes. My hair sucks!"

Joann is a no-nonesense Missouri native who instinctively knows how to handle men, and most other things. She tries, usually in vain, to direct and advise me on the romantic prospects that came my way.

But the time for advice was over. Now, she was giving orders.

"Oh you're going, girl. I've got makeup and hair spray. Look in my purse. It's that pink bag."

I opened the pink bag and pulled out powder, blush and lip gloss. I pawed at the bottom of it for more and came up empty.

"I need mascara! Eye shadow! Concealer!"

"No you don't," she said. "Let me look at you."

I turned my face toward hers and she studied me as well as any driver could in moving traffic.

"Well, maybe just a little concealer," she admitted.

"That's it," I said. "I'm telling him no."

The phone rang, a dramatic trumpeting that made every call - particularly this one - sound supremely important.

"You tell him you're going," she said.

I withered at her commanding tone.

"There's a Big K right around the corner here," she said. We'll get you all fixed up. Tell him you need 20 minutes."

I heard the reluctance in his tone when he agreed to 20 minutes. My car was at least 10 minutes from the downtown restaurant in which we had agreed to meet, and we hadn't even reached it yet. Twenty minutes, I knew, was inconceivable.

Joann knew no such word. We exited the highway, blasted through a light more red than yellow and careened into the Big K parking lot.

"This is ridiculous," I said. "I don't have the money to buy all new cosmetics."

"Who said anything about buying?" She tossed the words over her shoulder as she marched toward the door.

I followed, childlike.

In the cosmetics aisle, she grabbed an unboxed bottle of concealer and spun the top off.

"Now, slow movements so you're not obvious," she said softly. "Find yourself a mirror and do what you gotta do."

A few feet away, in jewelry, I spied a slender mirror designed to let women assess their potential jeweled purchases.

I dabbed makeup under my eyes and, for good measure, on my cheeks and chin, rubbing it in quickly.

"Turn around," Joann said. She studied my face, and rubbed here and there with her fingertip, blending in the foundation.

Similarly, I found a case of eye shadow that had been dropped. Its powdery contents were broken into crumbs. It would never sell. Joann opened it quickly and placed it into my hands.

"Here," she said, directing me to the Maybelline section. "This is 40 percent off."

This time, we purchased. For $5, I bought mascara and eyeliner and while Joann signed my debit card receipt, I applied them in yet another slender trinkets mirror.

"She has a date," Joann explained to the jewelry department clerk who tallied my purchases.

The woman grinned. "Oh! Good luck!"

I blushed, not out of embarrassment but guilt for having ransacked her cosmetics aisles.

Joann hurried me back into the parking lot.

"Now," she said, "stand here."

I stood next to her car while she removed a can of hairspray from her glove box. As I watched in the reflection of the passenger side window, she grabbed and sprayed bits and pieces of hair, carefully assessing it as she went. My hair was flat and uninspired no longer.

"There!" she said, pleased with her handiwork. "Now it looks funky, and fun."

We hurried back into the car. Eight minutes had passed.

"Now, take off your sunglasses," she said. "Look at me."

I turned my face to hers and she grinned. "You look beautiful!"

Ninety seconds later, I was unlocking my car door, 10 minutes later pulling into a parking spot a block away from the restaurant. The meter flashed red. I had nary a penny on me. I turned my back on the nagging meter and ran half a block, then slowed to a ladylike stroll. The long, cocoa brown, light skirt I'd chosen for work swirled sweetly around my calves. No one would guess I'd spent the last half hour in a state of almost utter panic.

My eyes sought the sign that marked the restaurant. I spied it on the second floor of a building still some considerable distance away. Even from here, I could see him standing on the deck, watching me walk.

For a couple minutes, I pretended not to have seen him.

Within days, I would discover my latest casual love interest was not the man for me. I would see him at his worst, neglecting his children while he entertained other adults and drank excessive amounts of alcohol. I would see other qualities, too, that quickly told me he was perhaps right for someone else, but not for me.

But for those few moments on that downtown Denver street, I knew none of that. I felt beautiful, excited and admired. In part by the fact that he had asked me, and in part by the dramatic process involved in getting me there.

I looked up, long enough so that he knew I had seen him. I waved, and then sent a smile that traveled down the sidewalk and up two stories, directly to the man who waited for me.

My son, at 11, is anti-Bush.

His favorite show is The Colbert Report.

He is a Democrat in the making.

I suspect, well, am quite sure, he got this from me. Sometimes I think this is funny. Mostly, I find it amazing because yes, I influenced him, but he came in large part to his own conclusions.

About two years ago, he asked me the difference between a Republican and a Democrat.

This is something I did not ask anyone until I was at least 23. My friend Lane can attest to this. She was the person to whom I asked it. By that time, I am ashamed to say, I had been a reporter for two years, five if college counts. Even after that, my momentary interest in politics slipped away and did not re-emerge in any significant way until perhaps as little as five years ago.

So to hear this question from a 9-year-old threw me for a loop.

I did my best to explain.

He furrowed his brow at the thought of Democrats taking taxes - money from people who had earned it - for social programs. He was, he decided, a Republican. At this, I furrowed my own brow. Apparently, I'd done a more objective job of explaining these things than I'd thought. I threw out one more sentence, describing a few of the programs those taxes supported. I talked about the homeless, and the mentally ill. Robby does not yet know anything of my history of mental illness. Yet something of my passion no doubt crept into my tone.

He changed his mind. A Democrat he was.

I explained, too, that there was no need to choose a party. But I clearly lean left. And so does he.

Robby doesn't just watch the Colbert Report. He understands it. More than once, I have explained the element of sarcasm, the character Stephen Colbert plays, that the message he relays is far more than the words he uses. The second time I went over this with him - certain the subject matter was just too deep for him - he cut me off. "I get it, Mom."

Last night, rain drove us inside and eventually, to Storm Stories, the best we could find among the Sunday night lineup. Our friend Laura, in whose home we were overnight guests, sat with us in the living room. We had mostly been a silent trio throughout the evening.

A lead-in to a story about Hurricane Katrina included short, sometimes incomplete quotes from the mayor of New Orleans, desperate residents and the president.

The camera focused on Bush addressing a crowd, his face earnest, his tone strong. "The worst disaster in natural history ..."

"Is Bush!" Robby quipped.

I looked at him, then at Laura. She and I burst into laughter. Robby watched us, and followed suit, his laughter louder than ours, clearly delighted by his own joke. Moments later, he and I were still exchanging occasional glances and bursting into fits of laughter.

Sometimes, I find the concept of parenting an awesome responsibility. I wonder how this job fell to me, that anyone could deem me fit to mold another person. It seems an honor, and a task, too great. The further realization that my son is molding his beliefs, both religious and political, to mine - and not his father's - is at once wonderful and terrifying. To me, a so-called journalist who for most of her life has cared very little about politics, an 11-year-old is turning to learn the values that will shape his future. Sure as I am in my own views, I am humbled by the idea. And proud almost beyond expression by his interest and comprehension of subjects that were beyond me for so long.

But what's even better than being an interesting person is, in my mind, being a funny one. Hopefully, I'm raising both.