From: al677@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jerry Cosyn)
Subject: Dr. Cobweb's Asylum
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, (USA)
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 92 18:28:21 GMT


     The Basket Case wandered in and started haranguing us with his
usual opening gambit.  It was his assertion that a frisk search should
replace the handshake as the standard form of greeting, thus cutting
down on the rampant paranoia, xenophobia and suspicion which he
insists are at the heart of all the violence in the world.  As usual,
he tried to pat us all down right there in the day room, which was
pretty ridiculous since we were all wearing standard issue greens,
with no pockets or anything.  It took him awhile to harry Snuffles
into a corner, which turned out to be good for me.  Dr. Cobweb came in
just before The Basket Case got around to patting me down and made him
sit down so we could start the session, so I was spared a close
encounter of the ticklish kind.
 
     As soon as the session started, Snuffles jumped right in
complaining about The Basket Case always touching people, putting his
hands on them.  The Basket Case retaliated by explaining yet again how
necessary it was, which prompted shouts from Scowling Dave (about the
invasion of his personal privacy) and The Politician (about speaking
out of turn).  By the time the doctor got them sorted out and quieted
down, I was safely out of the picture, ignored and forgotten.  In
sessions, that's my favorite role.
 
     After spending some time tossing around the delicate social
nuances of ritual frisking, the doc made the mistake of asking The
Smartass if there was something he'd like to bring up.  Now, the rest
of us know better than to ever ask The Smartass anything, and
especially not an open-ended question like that.  But the doc, he
doesn't get to spend nearly as much time around the ward as we do, and
he hasn't caught on that it's always a good idea to ignore The
Smartass and just count yourself lucky if he doesn't interject
comments from the side, uninvited.  So he led with his chin, so to
speak, and we all rolled our eyes in the five seconds it took The
Smartass to ease the front legs of his chair back onto the floor,
uncross his legs and lean forward on his knees before he drawled out
his Major Concern.
 
     "Well..." he said slowly.  "Now that you mention it, there is
something that's been sorta bothering me.  I want to know why it is
that every time you buy a box of crackers or cereal or something like
that there's always this big damn deal on the box about how they have
this great reclosable top, with the nifty keen little tab-and-slot,
but when you go to open the damn thing they've got it sealed up with
some kinda space-age NASA glue that's stronger than the cardboard box,
so you gotta tear the whole damn lid off, nifty little tab-and-slot
and all.  Why is that do you s'pose?"
 
     Dr. Cobweb said maybe that question was ranging a little too far
afield, because right now we really should be discussing the
interactions of the group and dealing with our own individual
situations rather than taking on the far greater burden of dealing
with the dynamics of an entire society.  But The Smartass was warmed
up now, glowing with a light of his own, and hopped right back in
before anybody else could say anything.  With his engine already
running, he began to spume in a noxious frenzy.
 
     Wasn't it true, he wanted to know, that the reason we were all
there was because we had specific difficulties dealing with the
situations encountered in daily contact with our social matrix?  Well
then, take TV commercials.  TV commercials are a pervasive form of
daily contact with our social matrix -- hell, they even reach us in
here where we're almost isolated.  So it seemed legitimate to him to
bring up the topic and discuss it and deal with it because he had a
lot of questions about TV commercials that needed answers.  Like did
anyone ever actually have the nerve to give a Ronco product to someone
as a gift?  And how about that black guy advertising those special
nifty blacktop basketball shoes, where he's talking about how there
are no rules and those guys are hopping around some inner city parking
lot with a basketball?  No rules, he says, and he's telling ghetto
kids that they need a $90 pair of shoes to play basketball in the
street; what kind of message is that supposed to be?
 
     By the time the doc got him shut up, the session was over and I
was able to slide out and get to the nurses' station first so I had my
choice of pills, but I think maybe I took the wrong one, because I
slept right through dinner and missed the Parchisi match.  I gotta
remember to break the blue pills in half from now on.
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre,alt.sex,soc.singles