Chapter 5
I NEVER COULD GET THE HANG OF
THRUSDAYS
I was taken to Saint Frances Hospital
I mumbled out the basics, name
former address, insurance none and babbled incoherently about a fire. That done I retired from further active
participation with the world around me.
The nurses took my temp blood
pressure, timed my heart beat. It was
decided I was dehydrated and I was put on an iv. Dehydrated was I figured a nice way for the
nurses to say I was drunk. After not too
long a time a doctor came looked at me for a moment and he left. A nurse returned waving a set of papers.
The nurse informs me that there is
nothing wrong with me and the doctor had signed my discharge papers. I could go.
I lay there meditating.
She flutters the discharge papers in
front of my closed eyes. “The doctor has
discharged you, you can go.”
I continued my meditation.
She shoved the examination bed upon
which I lay, snapping the papers franticly in front of my closed eyes.
I lay there meditating.
They decided to leave me alone for a
bit. Hoping I would gain enough sense to
sign the discharge paperwork and get out of the way.
A nurse comes into the room,
pretending to be putting away medical supplies.
She is slamming cupboard doors open and closed like an angry house wife.
I feel bad for her I really do. There she is a busy woman with way to much to
do and real sick people to care for and there was this perfectly healthy person
laying there like a big old lump. How
very irritating. I want to explain the
situation to her, but it would take too long and she wouldn’t believe me
anyway. So I lay there meditating,
waiting for the wheels of bureaucracy to turn.
About an hour later a nurse returns
and say they have decided to transfer me to the San Francisco General the Psyc
ward.
I open one eye and say, “That would
be fine, thank you.” I return to my mediation.
First stop, the three day hold. It’s a big room with uncomfortable reclining seat/beds I am given a tasteless turkey sandwich, and a
sipping box of juice, (hmm, juice). I haven’t eaten in a couple of days, the
sandwich goes down well.
The three day hold is mostly for
allowing druggies and drunks to sober up enough to be not too great a nuisance
to society at large upon being released.
I eat my sandwich and listening to the mutterings and snoring of my
fellow patients I pull up my thin blanket and sleep.
Day two I get pudding with my
lunch,( hmmm, pudding.)
Then the interview. A very bored man begins asking me the
standard questions, medications allergies, blah, blah, blah,
“Why are you here?” He asks me.
“Well, I set fire to my apartment
because my landlord is trying to kill me.”
I said.
He looks up from the form on his
desk and blinks at me, twice.
“Excuse me, I’ll be right
back.” And he scurries from the room.
He returns with a nervous shuffling
of forms. You see I am now a problem for
which a solution must be found. A danger
to self and others. Now honestly society
doesn’t really give a tinkers damn about the danger to self and very little
about danger to others ahh but endanger property? Now that’s something that needs
attention. They can’t just sober me up
and send me on my merry way, just imagine the law suits if they released an
admitted fire bug and she, one out sets another property to blaze.
I’m sent upstairs to the hospitals
official pscy. Ward. This is intended to
be a two to three week holding pen for the inconveniently unstable. Quite a few teenagers here.
Another interview, he’s a tired
looking man in a suite that needs pressing.
It’s a dull beige room, behind him silk plants that look wilted.
He sits, forms in front of him, pen
in hand. Ahh yes let the games begin.
“Allergies?”
“None.”
“Medications?”
“None.”
“Do you hear voices?”
I have been asked this many times
and they always seem so disappointed when I say no.
“The year?”
“2002”
“Who is president?”
“George Bush” (And
they call me mad)
“The day.”
I pause thinking. I haven’t seen a newspaper in a while and
it’s been a busy few days, counting back in my head, and then it comes to
me. In my best English accent. “Thursday, it must be Thursday, never could
get the hang of Thursdays.”
“Oh? Why is that?” He looks up pen
pausing.
I laugh. “oh never mind, classical reference.” (The Hitchers guide to the galaxy)
He looks confused but decides to
forge ahead.
“Could you count backward from a
hundred by 7s?”
“Hu?, now what exactly does my
mathematical ability have to do with my sanity?” I ask. “I mean the
mathematically gifted among us have always been more than a bit twitchy on the
sanity scale.”
“It’s just a question I have to
ask.” He says looking down at the form
on the table.
“Really?” I shrug. “Poor you. Well as the designated mad person in the room
I am under no such obligation. How about
we do prime numbers? Hmm lets see
backward from a hundred
97,89,83,79,73,71,67,61,59,53,47,43,41,37,29,23,19,17,13,11,7,5,3,2
Or, I know how about a nice
Fibonacci sequence, Hmmm backward from a
hundred, 89,55,34,21,13,8,5,3,2,1,1.
“Ahh, what’s a Fibonacci sequence?”
“It’s the mathematical proportions
of a spiral.” I smile and flutter my
eyelashes at him. Always good to have a
few clever things tucked away in your memory.
The preliminaries done with he
brings out the big guns. A deck of
cards. I groan inwardly and slink down in my chair. Roche cards.
“These are called Roche ink blot
cards.” He explains to me. “Just look at
them and say the first word that pops into your head.”
Bullshit is the first word that pops
into my head but I don’t say it.
The idea here is that the images one
sees in the ink blot will give the interviewer an insight into the interviewees
state of mind. Only one small problem
with that idea, There are no symbols
that carry a universal meaning.
A persons internal symbology is
unique to each individual to their history, their back ground, their
experience. The Roch test? The meanings of the symbols are all set forth
by a very uniform group of people, highly educated upper-class white males from
a western background. They are so
arrogant that they blithely assume the whole world sees things the same way as
they do. Or at the very least should.
If one were to look at a card and see a sail
boat, to the interviewer such a symbol might mean peacefulness, pleasure,
calm. To a person wo say traps lobster
for a living, such a thing might represent for him irritation (as at rich over
fed tourists getting in the way of their business). To a person raised in a
desert or to one who had almost drowned. Even symbols that are universally
recognized such as a Christian cross, would it mean the same to a Jew? A Muslim
to one who had been molested by a priest?
Ahh well, let him have his fun. Eene Meany Chilly Beany the id is about to
speak. He turns the cards over, I barely
glance at them. Giving him answers I
read in books. Sailing boat two ballet
dancers, a dove, violets ect. He turns
one over I instantly recognize.
“Ohh, that’s the bat.” I laugh and
wave my hand at it.
“Why do you say it’s a bat?” He looks up, his pen pausing, he thinks he’s
hit on something significant here.
“Because, that particular ink blot
was used as a prop in one of the Bat man movies. The female lead in the movie, playing a
criminal psychologist, had this ink blot as an enloarged framed print on her
wall. In walks Bat Man in his daily
disguise as Bruce Wayne. He looks at the
picture and says. ‘Ohh a bat.” She says,
‘ohh now why do you say it’s a bat?’
“Now if you ask me if I think I’m
Bat man I shall be really annoyed.”
He looks slightly put out, but
decides not to comment and he continues with the cards. I’m not even bothering to look at them any
more.
A falling pot of petunias, a
confused looking whale. He doesn’t ask
why the whale is confused which is for the best he wouldn’t have understood the
answer.
We reach the end of his cards and he
takes a moment to tabulate the results.
“Well Doc, how’d I do?
“Well, it shows that you are mild to
moderately depressed.”
Give me a set of tarot cards and I
could do a cold reading of considerably more depth and accuracy.
Being officially diagnosed as
somewhat depressed, I was promptly put on a course of anti psychotics and
adivan Jolly good fun.
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