Sunday, November 10, 2013
The Power of Names
Experimenting With Nuts
“Abrupt them!” went the Doctor's direction.
“He's inventing a verb.”
“Whatever. How's it going with yours?” Claude
asked Jerry.
“My patients are batting 500.”
“Mine about the same.”
Anyway, makes no difference the context,” laughed Jerry,
“I just snap Name? LAST NAME FIRST!"
"As you’re supposed to, but what's it proving?"
"Ours not to reason why."
Whatever it proved or disproved, the program
went reasonably well until the new aide read
a forgetful patient his name. Trouble was he told
him the wrong name. So Bill Halkins became
Walter Sygminski.
And really did, from that moment. The unit thus
gaining an additional Walter.
When it was reported to the doctor, he got mixed up
and thought that Claude was the miscreant. "You need
a week off. You must have several vacation days coming.
Take next week, and that's an order.”
“But...!” got him nowhere. He swallowed yet another
injustice.
But the travel agent found him a place of
undemanding seminars and health whatevers.
And it was Bird Watching Week.
Claude bought a beautiful manual, and loved the
pictures. Absolutely loved them. Lingering over them.
He was very far from unwound, though, that first
morning when Rilly came to fetch him for a 7 am
massage. It being dark he stuck close to white-clad
Rilly, who chuckled hoarsely at Claude’s stumbles.
The lamplight in the studio showed him that
the departing Rilly was blind.
Brenda, the masseuse (perfumed least Shalimar), didn't
quite snap it, but Claude, in some still-sleepy perversity
he'll never grasp, answered her request for his name,
“Sygminski, Walter.”
Brenda embraced him. Rilly, outside, had overheard,
and reentered to embrace both together. Jinks, from
the next booth, rushed in and did the expected.
Whereupon the quartet swayed, emitting a high-pitched
"Walter! Walter!"
Labels: experiment, health farm, mental health, perversity
