Monthly Archives: April 2016

Therapy Sessions of the Fictional and Famous: Lorelai Gilmore

Being famous can be very stressful, particularly if you’re a fictional character into the bargain.  Certain mental health professionals specialize in treating the fictional and famous; true, most insurance companies don’t cover this, but fortunately most of these therapists accept space bucks, Federation credits, and Monopoly money.  Primary among this elite cadre of professionals is Dr. Sidney Freedman, of M*A*S*H fame.  As he is also a fictional character, he can relate to his patients and help them feel at ease.  I, being a quasi-fictional character myself (the Little Blind Girl, or LBG, is a recurring character in Charlie Cottrell’s Hazzard novels and is based on me!) have availed myself of his services from time to time.  Don’t ask how I pay him; this isn’t that kind of blog.

Lauren_Graham,_2008_appearance_(crop)What he doesn’t know (and shh, don’t tell him) is that I planted a listening device in his office the last time I was there.  I was curious about what his other patients had to say, and let me tell you:  what I heard was astounding.  There are so many famous fictional characters whose dirty secrets I could share with you, but I think I’ll start with Cathy Coffee herself, Lorelai Gilmore.  She comes off as sweet and friendly on the surface, but believe me, there are some demons flying around in that head.  Once you hear what she has to say, you’ll never view small towns, quirky neighbors, or questionable eating habits in quite the same way.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Note for those of you who understand that this is a humor blog and I’m just kidding about all this, or at least most of it:  all of Lorelai’s responses are actual quotes from her character on the television show Gilmore Girls.  If you haven’t heard of Gilmore Girls, just turn on the TV or open up any webpage on the entire internet and the indoctrination will begin within ten minutes.  I hope you like coffee.

Without further ado, here is Lorelai Gilmore’s therapy session:

Dr. Freedman:  Hello, Lorelai.  That’s an awfully large cup of coffee you’re carrying.  Are you ready to get started?

Lorelai Gilmore:  (on the phone) I’ll be right in.

Dr. Freedman:  Who are you talking to?

Lorelai Gilmore:  My other two personalities. (Turns off phone)

Dr. Freedman:  Is that why you came to see me, because you have multiple personalities?

Lorelai Gilmore:  Voices in my head–totally normal, right?

Dr. Freedman:  How many voices do you hear in your head?

Lorelai Gilmore:  There’s only two.  That speak English.

Dr. Freedman:  And what are these voices saying?

Lorelai Gilmore:  Oh, I don’t know.  How about “Good morning, Appalachia, I got a mighty cute sister and an extra set of toes.”

Dr. Freedman:  You’ve got an inbred hillbilly in your head with you?

Lorelai Gilmore:  Well, I know how mad you get when I bring the Insane Clown Posse with me.

Dr. Freedman:  Lorelai, you know I only asked you to stop talking to the voices in your head because you said they gave you flashbacks to your alien abduction.

Lorelai Gilmore:  Okay, as long as you’ve got a sane reason from a reliable source.

Dr. Freedman:  I’d like to go back to a concern you raised in a previous session, about your inability to maintain a loving, romantic relationship.  Is that still a problem?

Lorelai Gilmore:  I love pudding.  I worship it.  I have a bowl up on the mantel at home with the Virgin Mary, a glass of wine, and a dollar bill next to it.

Dr. Freedman:  We’ve talked about this.  Your feelings toward food are not appropriate.  I want you to do the exercise I gave you, all right?  Go ahead.

Lorelai Gilmore:  (concentrating hard) I am attracted to pie, but I do not feel the need to date pie.

Dr. Freedman:  That’s good, Lorelai, we’re making progress.  Now, why don’t you try putting down your coffee cup?

Lorelai Gilmore:  If it was physically possible to make love to a hot beverage, this would be the one.

Dr. Freedman:  I can see we’re not going to make any further progress on this front.  Is there anything else you’d like to attempt during our session today?

Lorelai Gilmore:  I hear there’s a shipment of plutonium coming in on the docks.  And I thought we could dress up as nuns and you could fake a stigmata and you could put the plutonium under your habit.

Dr. Freedman:  I see.  And how will we dispose of the plutonium once we have it?

Lorelai Gilmore:  Well, one of those bench ads usually does the trick.

Dr. Freedman:  Lorelai, this is the seventh session in a row during which we’ve accomplished practically nothing.

Lorelai Gilmore:  We should commemorate it with an oil painting or a severed head or something.

Dr. Freedman:  Yet, despite your complete lack of effort, I want you to continue seeing me.

Lorelai Gilmore:  Prove it.  Drop your pants!

Dr. Freedman:  I want you to give me one more session with honest effort.  Will you do that for me?

Lorelai Gilmore:  I’ll give you two because you scare me.

Dr. Freedman:  I’m only asking for one, Lorelai, and there’s no reason to be afraid of me.  I’d like to see you again to work on healthy ways to deal with conflict.  When would be a good time to work on that?

Lorelai Gilmore:  Tomorrow, if you have time, I’m planning on despising everyone who says “Hey, how’s it going?”

Dr. Freedman:  (sighs) Please don’t make me bring out the Hello Kitty straightjacket again.  It makes me feel so silly.

I swear, every line is verbatim as it came out of the mouth of Lorelai Gilmore.  I await the Wrath Of The Fans with trepidation, a plateful of pop tarts, and an IV of caffeine.  Lorelai’s coming over later, once she fast-talks her way out of the asylum, and we’re going to decide once and for all if we’re Team Dean or Team Jess (don’t even talk to me about Team Logan), and then we’re going to go do something even more dangerous.  Have you ever heard of a Brazilian Bikini Wax??

Image credit:  Photographed by Greg Hernandez*derivative work: – Kerαunoςcopia◁galaxies – Lauren Graham, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17574854

 

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Meet Super (Blind) Girl

I have a superpower.  Now, if I had a choice as to what superpower I would have, it wouldn’t be this one.  My first choice would be the ability to fly.  After that, I think maybe super-healing (because chopping vegetables while blind never ends well) or maybe immortality, because awesome.  It wasn’t up to me, though, so what I ended up with was this:  when I’m out running errands, I have the ability to go into a store and walk right up to the thing I’m looking for, even when I have no idea where it is and I can’t see it or anything around it.  Useful, but no one’s going to make a movie out of that anytime soon.  I don’t think.  Unless I can figure out how to sparkle while I do it.

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Edward Cullen by Joel Kuiper, licensed by CC

My superpower became apparent a while ago when I was out with a friend shopping for a garlic press.  We were at Overpriced Behemoth Box Store (not the actual name, unless we’re being honest) in which literally thousands of items of varying degrees of usefulness were shelved, hung, and piled up farther than the eye, or my eye at least, could see.  We resigned ourselves to a minimum twenty-minute session of squinting and swearing, girded our loins, and went once more unto the breach.  I forded a nearby aisle, picked something up at random to see what it was, and yes:  it was indeed a garlic press.  Or should I say, it was the garlic press, because not only was it the thing I was looking for, it was the only one in the entire store.  All this while my Totally Sighted Friend was searching fruitlessly right beside me.  Hand to God, and I have a witness.

It’s gotten to the point that my Totally Sighted Friend will take me to the grocery store, tell me what she needs, and then follow me around until I find it.  One day she needed potatoes, so I wandered into the produce aisle, picked up a kumquat, put down the kumquat because I’ve never been sure what a kumquat is, thought I might like some cheese, and on the way to the cheese stand nearly ran into the potatoes.  Totally Sighted Friend seriously and with opportunism aforethought just leaned on the cart and watched me amble around until I stopped and went, “Hey! Potatoes!”  Which were right next to the onions I remembered I needed when two of them fell into my shopping cart.  They were specifically yellow onions, too, which was the kind I  wanted.  That’s really what makes it a super-power:  it’s so freaking specific.

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copyright 2011-2016 by woodstock-chan on deviantart.com http://fav.me/d397ahb

Of course, with great power comes great responsibility.  For instance, I have to be careful when I’m looking for something sharp or heavy that I don’t have anyone near me at the time lest they find themselves minus a finger or plus a concussion, because if I don’t immediately find whatever I’m looking for, it will launch itself at me, and not all coffee-makers have good aim.  I also have to watch out that the things I’m looking for don’t spill themselves all over the floor beside me and trip some innocent bystander who didn’t realize who they were standing next to.  As Super (Blind) Girl, it is my duty to minimize collateral damage in the fight of good against evil, and by good against evil I mean me against whatever idiot decided to reorganize the grocery store aisles I had so carefully memorized (side note to whoever did that:  I hope that when you go home, your mother runs out from under the porch and bites you).

Yea, verily, the life of a superhero is fraught with peril.  As I walk this lonely road, gentle readers, do not envy me, but follow at a safe distance, because there’s a decent chance I’ll accidentally find whatever it is you’re looking for.  By the way, I also have the power to draw smiley faces on the insides of basketballs, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to take that one on faith. 🙂

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Why I Got Nothing Done Today, Told In The Style Of A Lying 8-Yr-Old

[Editor’s note:  Now with pirates!]

Embed from Getty Images

 

I really tried to take out the trash, I swear, just like I was supposed to.  But, see, right when I was emptying the trashcan into the bag, these pirates came in and just started, like, attacking the trash.  Every time I tried to throw something away, they would spear it, you know, with their swords, until their swords were all full of empty Lean Cuisine cartons and that old candy bar you said I shouldn’t eat.  Which I didn’t.  And then when I went to throw out the rest of the trash, some of the pirates snuck in front of me and hid all the rest of the trashcans so the other pirates wouldn’t find them, and I was so mad.  And then, and then, when I finally got everything in the trash bag and I was trying–no, really, I was!–to throw out the trash bag, the pirates, like, made me walk the plank!  And then while I was swimming back, they took all the trash and put it back in the trashcans, and they took all the trash bags with them so I couldn’t throw anything out, I swear, they really did.  It wasn’t my fault, you know, ’cause I could have fought the pirates if you hadn’t have took away my sword after Halloween.

Then I tried to clean the bathroom, ’cause I felt so bad about not being able to take out the trash.  And I turned on the faucet in the tub to, you know, get lots of water for the cleaning, and then, then this mermaid came out of the faucet and started splashing around in the water.  And she was getting water, you know, everywhere and I couldn’t get her to stop ’cause I don’t speak giant fish lady.  I tried, really, I did, but she only giggled and splashed even more, so I turned off the faucet and she just, you know, swam down the drain, and that’s why there’s water all over the bathroom.  It wasn’t my fault.  I didn’t know there was a mermaid in the faucet, I mean, there never was before. 

So then I was, you know, gonna vacuum the rugs.  But then, see, this monster came in ’cause it heard the vacuum, right, and it thought the vacuum was growling at it.  So the monster was trying to fight the vacuum, and every time I tried to push the vacuum onto one of the rugs, the monster would rush at me, and I had to run away.  And then, see, when I ran upstairs, the vacuum followed me, ’cause it was scared, and then the monster, you know, the monster followed the vacuum.  So then the vacuum and I tricked the monster into getting in the closet, and then we shut it in and stayed real quiet until it fell asleep.  But we couldn’t, you know, do any more vacuuming, ’cause then the monster would wake up.  I really tried, but the monster messed everything up, you know,  and anyway you should stop yelling ’cause I’m pretty sure it’s still up there.

 

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Depression And Me, Or: Not Today, My Friend

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Hands behind glass by jannemei on flickr https://flic.kr/p/APgHk licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

If hope is the thing with feathers, then depression is the thing with barbed wire.  Depression is the thing with barbed wire that wraps around the soul and binds and tightens and tears apart and never stops at all.  If a person were stumbling down Main Street literally wrapped in barbed wire, people would shriek (and probably whip out their camera phones), emergency personnel would respond, and that person would receive effective medical attention and sympathy.  It would make the news.  There would probably be one of those online fundraising campaigns for medical bills that would reach its goal in half an hour.  Yet there are millions of people walking around with metaphorical barbed wire wrapped around their souls, and somehow that’s not only not a crisis, it’s a complete non-event.  When did this become acceptable?

Of course, it isn’t acceptable, but that doesn’t keep us as a society from accepting it.  I think a large part of that comes from the inability of those who have never experienced depression, no matter how well-meaning they may be, to understand fully what it’s like.  The most hideous part of depression isn’t the pain, or the despair.  It’s not the exhaustion, the isolation, or the sheer tedium.  It’s the helplessness.  Depression targets your will, weakening it until you may know what can be done and you may want to do something, but you’re incapable of making the choice to do anything.  Free will, or the ability to choose, is what makes us human, makes us people instead of animals, and that’s what depression hits hardest.  If it keeps hold of you long enough, you’ll no longer have enough of yourself left even to want to do anything.  Depression destroys what makes us who we are, and if you’ve never had something that fundamental taken from you, you can have the best intentions in the world and still have no way to comprehend what the experience is like.

The hell of it is, for those of us under siege from that horror, we’re still in there somewhere.  Behind all the pain, despair, exhaustion, isolation, tedium, and helplessness, we’re there.  We’re screaming for someone to help us, raging at our own inaction, and begging for the pain to stop.  We’re also, frankly, really bored.  You have no idea how boring it is to be trapped in your own head, listening to the same malicious thoughts over and over.  I mean, how many times can you hear that you’re not good enough before you start to think, enough already!  At least pick a new fault.

I’ve actually had that thought, and that’s really what led me to find my most effective weapon against the depression I’ve fought against for twenty years:  humor.  That’s why this screed belongs on a humor blog.  Laughter isn’t just medicine.  It’s also a tool that can cut through the barbed wire and  a key that can unlock your will to choose.  Ironically, or perhaps just symmetrically, laughing at someone is also the tool that will secure the wire in place and the key that will close the lock.  It’s kindhearted laughter, generous humor, that works against depression.  I, for instance, laugh about how terrible I am at yoga and write sonnets to Johnny Depp.  You may choose to turn on the television, mute the sound, and make up your own dialogue (this is a favorite with my circle of friends; we’ve found it works best with soap operas, the news, and any kind of talk show).  As long as you keep kindness in your heart, laughter will help.

Laughter from a kind heart makes room.  It eases the pressure of sorrow against your soul.  It creates the space you need to pick yourself back up when you fall down.  It acknowledges that we’re all human and we’re all, at various points in our lives, ridiculous.  It gives leeway for screw-ups and fallibility because they happen to everyone and the world will keep spinning.  It makes room because we’ve all been there and we will be again, and we want there to be a way out.  With depression, laughter makes room for one of the first things that gets forced out:  hope.  Hope is the ball of twine that led Theseus through the labyrinth, and it hasn’t lost any of its power with time.  So for the past twenty years I’ve taught myself to laugh as much as I can and to hold on to hope so that, with luck and the world’s dippiest sense of humor, I’ll find my way through.  The Minotaur won’t get to eat me this time.

For those of you who know someone suffering from depression, please understand that he or she is facing the inexpressible anguish of becoming less of a person each day.  Help them however you can, and thank fate, chance, or whatever gods you believe in that it’s not happening to you.  Depression should shock the world, but it doesn’t, and it should never have become a source of stigma, but it has.  I worry about what that says about us as people, and I worry about those who don’t feel free to ask for the help they need.  I worry about what another twenty years of suffering is going to do to me.

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Prothonotary Warbler Singing by Noel Pennington on Flickr https://flic.kr/p/kDn241 licensed under CC BY 2.0

But as long as I can laugh, I have hope.

 

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

– Emily Dickenson

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