Dressing the part

My wife and I have this ongoing disagreement. I have come to grips with the realization that this disagreement will never be settled and, at the end of our days, she will still hold her position and I will hold mine. The subject is “nurses’ caps,” or the lack thereof.

Remember in ye olden days when nurses wore nursing caps? Where we came from, registered nurses wore a white cap with a black stripe, licensed practical nurses wore a white cap with a green stripe, and “candy stripers,” those young teens, who aspired to be nurses someday, wore a cap that was red and white and looked like a mangled candy cane. In other areas of the country the caps may have varied from those just described but caps they wore. I liked the caps. I still like the caps. My wife, however, a veteran nurse and current university professor with four degrees, including a Ph.D. in nursing, loathes the caps. Something about the caps symbolizing the physician’s patriarchal systematic “putdown” of nurses.

She may be right about that. All I know is that when I go into the hospital as a patient, something I’ve done thrice in three years, I can’t tell the RNs from the bedpan ladies and I can’t tell the LPNs from the cleaning lady. Why? No cap, that’s why.

My wife says that the hospital employees wear name badges but that doesn’t help a lick. For one thing, the ID badges are almost always turned around backwards (so the cleaning lady can pose as a nurse, I surmise) and, if they’re not, they are worn on the chest where gentlemen are not supposed to stare. I was trying to see if the lady in scrubs was a nurse the last time I was in the hospital so I stared at her badge. She shot me a withering look that would reduce Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan to tears. And speaking of scrubs, everybody wears them in the hospital, including the guy who mops the floor! So I think that by not wearing the caps, nurses may be free of whatever oppression they seek to be free from but the poor goob in the bed still can’t tell the nurse from the bedpan emptier. I think they lost more than they gained.

I feel the same way about clergy who eschew “clergy clothes” and wear shirts and ties, polo shirts, muscle shirts, or whatever the fad is these days. For most of 25 years of ministry, I was a coat-and-tie guy with leanings toward polo shirts. Of course the coat and tie/polo shirt guys blend in with others in such a way as to render them invisible. Now, I wear a black shirt with a white tab (called a “clergy shirt” in catalogs but also properly called “clerics”) most of the time but especially when I visit the hospital or am doing other serious ministry. As a result, I no longer am invisible and I have found that the doors of ministry are more open.

For example, I visited a Burger King not long ago and an employee walked over to where I was sitting and said, “Are you a minister?” She, of course, would never have done that if I had been a tie guy or a polo shirt dude. “Why, yes,” I replied. “Is there something I can do for you?” She went on to tell me about her life and situation and asked me to pray for her, which I did right there in the Burger King. A few weeks ago, the same scene was repeated in the cafeteria of an Atlanta hospital. A couple of months ago, a server at a restaurant sat down and spent about half an hour asking questions of a spiritual nature. In fact, it happens all the time — once or more a week.

There’s a downside to wearing clerics — one can’t be snippy or rude to people, but that’s probably a good thing. The clerics say, “I am a minister and I am available for you!” The shirt and tie and the polo shirt say — well, they say nothing. They render the minister invisible. Some ministers would rather be invisible than be mistaken for a Catholic priest (a condition called “Rome-aphobia”), but, if one doesn’t like the black clerics, required for priests in my denomination, there are companies out there that make clerics in all the colors of the rainbow. Except pink. I’ve never seen a pink clergy shirt.

I also realize that most ministers will not be swayed by my appeals to dress in a way that makes them “look like ministers.” I lose the same battle with my wife when I argue that nurses should “look like nurses.” I know that nurses can be nurses without caps and that ministers can minister without clerics but it just seems so much easier to do the job when people know exactly who you are!

I mean, if a guy stands in front of me and tries to stop my car, and that guy is carrying a gun, guess what? I’m not gonna stop! Well, what if the guy is a police officer? Then I want to see a badge and I want him or her to be in a police uniform! Then, I’ll stop. So, the next time a person in the hospital comes at me with a needle, I want to see some ID!