One Week

I’m not fond of my serious side, even though I know it’s an essential aspect of my identity. But like Barenaked Naked Ladies said, “I’m the kind of guy that laughs at a funeral,” so I suppose there are others out there like me.

I remember the first client I ever saw, a woman freshly released from the psychiatric ward. “We have no one else to see her” were my supervisor’s words when he learned the community clinic where I interned had overscheduled. He needed someone in a pinch.

My first actual client wasn’t supposed to be until the following week, so you might imagine how caught off guard and unprepared I was.

But I met with her, basically in a box with two metal chairs and a pencil-thin window.

“My Dad threw beer bottles at me and broke my arm.” She said as casually as if I asked her to recite prime numbers. Oh, and she was like eight when this happened.

But what do I remember most from that day?

How hard we laughed; two people holed up in practically a prison cell cracking the heck up with one another.

I think we take ourselves too seriously. I think we can do better. So Jaclynn, what do you recommend we do instead?

For starters…

“Chickity China, the Chinese chicken
You have a drumstick and your brain stops tickin’
Watching X-Files with no lights on
We’re dans la maison
I hope the Smoking Man’s in this one
Like Harrison Ford, I’m getting frantic
Like Sting, I’m tantric
Like Snickers, guaranteed to satisfy.”

You get the point.

Love, Me