Yuk, yuk. I was riding up to Augusta the other day. I was on my way to Bagel Mainea. They have very good bagels and a tofutti veggie spread to die for. I buy a baker’s dozen and cut them and freeze them. Delicious! On the way I heard the NPR news person talk about someone or something with the proper name of Babbel. The news person even went to the trouble to spell the name; B-A-B-B-E-L, she said. I was half listening, but as my mind goes, I began to play. The following story is the result.
Incidentally, my first visits with a therapist always had me on tenterhooks. I was so guilt ridden and paranoid that I thought every movement and gesture could be read as a piece of evidence that was listed in the DSM III. When I became a counselor I saw similar behavior in my clients. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”.
I hope your day is as beautiful as this one was. Peace out. G. M. Goodwin 17 August 2017
DRS. KELLERMAN, BABBEL, AND SMART
Stan stood outside the former dwelling in a tony section of Brunswick; Park Row. It had once been housing for faculty at Bowdoin College. The building had been restructured to accommodate the burgeoning mental health community. Stan stood for a moment checking his motives and needs. He read the house number on the door trim. It was the same as on the slip of paper he held in his hand. He examined the front of the building starting with the bottom floors. He carefully studied the windows; large windows with multiple smaller panes of glass top and bottom. Double hung windows that were probably older than Stan himself. Stan was in his sixties and the old house must have been that old at least. He’d grown up in an eastern city with small enclaves such as this. Places that had once housed the ruling and upper middle class families. Usually an old university near by where many were tenured and the children were expected to follow the well worn paths of privilege and expectation of the status quo.
Stan was not part of that strata. His parents were failed children of old settlers who always were on the service end of society. Children of mechanics, engineers, cooks, maids, farmers, and entertainers. Children of people who lived comfortably and privileged by race or ethnicity. The use of the phrase ‘failed children’ because in a culture so capitalistic as this the premise is accurate in that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That is if all things are equal. Except for his mother’s side who were Franco-Americans from Quebec and had entered the U.S. before there were border controls. His mother’s family came down from Coaticook, PQ, dirt poor to start. They were three young brothers who had run away from a miserable home and cruel stepmother. They were the ones that contributed to the engineer and entertainer end of the family occupations. Stan was not thinking these things as much as simply feeling the old feelings of exclusion while standing at the address written on the slip of paper he held in his hand. This building housed those who would hire his ancestors. Stan went in.
On the other side of the entryway was a foyer with several rooms open to the public; antique show rooms and a real estate office. These businesses helped to serve as a front for the psychiatrist’s offices which were upstairs. Clients entering the building could be simply shopping for antiques or looking for property to buy. The stairway was directly ahead not very far from the front door. He found a waiting room at the top of the stairs on the second floor. Stan took a few moments to choose a chair from the the many in the waiting room. There were magazines on a low table in the center of the space. On the far side of the low table was a rattan couch that looked inviting and spaced around were an eclectic grouping of stuffed and plastic chairs. This was a test, thought Stan. His first impression would be which seat he had chosen. Whomever came to get him would probably make a notation in a file of which chair Stan was found sitting in as well as his body language. Stan was still deciding when a thin youngish woman entered the room and told him she was ready for him. She never said her name, just asked Stan if he was ‘Stanley’. He said yes and followed her to another room near the top of the stairs.
Here Stan was faced with another Rorschach test upon entering the doctor’s private office. She gestured vaguely toward a smaller group of seats arranged in a sort of semi-circle. The obvious wrong chair was the one the psychiatrist was standing next to. Stan nearly passed out with anxiety trying to guess which chair was the least obvious choice. Finally Stan just turned toward the doctor and backed his way into the first one he contacted. It was a clever maneuver, Stan thought. He’d overcome the first and second tests neatly. He didn’t like the chair though. It was too stiff and the cushions were not very yielding. The doctor spoke.
“Hello, Stanley. Is it all right if I call you ‘Stanley’?”
“Oh, sure”, said Stan. He lied. He didn’t like his name. It sounded like Stanley Steamer the old car.
Stan always used ‘Stan’.
The doctor prattled on about the building and the locations of the water fountain, the bathroom, and the few other things she thought necessary for Stan to know.
“Any questions, Stanley?”
“No”, said Stan. He was still feeling uncomfortable but now an irritation toward the doctor was coming forward. Stan was not able to understand her accent and she spoke too fast. He couldn’t guess her accent although he could catch the gist of what she was trying to impart.
The doctor continued to talk and finally she got to the point of this visit.
“What is it you wanted to see me about, Stanley?”
“Um, I think I may be depressed.”
“What is going on that give you that impression?”
Stanley began telling about the tiredness, the inability to sleep through the night, the lack of interest in all the things he liked to do.
The doctor took over from there. She announced she would be able to help him unravel some of the mysteries of middle age and mortality and depression and she began giving Stan a rundown of the condition everyone labels ‘depression’. After she explained and defined depression she went on to give perfect examples of how the condition showed up in her life and the difficulty in admission of its presence. She was doing a bang-up job filling the air with words that Stan was having trouble understanding both for her accent and for her high educational background; words that Stan never knew existed.
Forty-five minutes later when she had exhausted all of her knowledge of depression and had shared all of her experiences with Stan she glanced at the small clock on top of the bookcase behind him and declared, “Well I declare…! Look at the time. I guess it’s time to stop. Do you have any questions for me?”
Stan was so fed up and angry he could barely breathe. He hadn’t said a word once she had started. He didn’t dare speak right now because he was afraid he’d behave badly.
He was able to say, “No” and stood up to leave the office.
“Are you paying by check or cash?”, asked the doctor. “If it’s by check make it out to Doctor Babbel.”
Stan stared at her. He couldn’t believe two things. Her name for one, plus the fact he had to pay her for listening to her problems.
Stan walked to the door and with his hand on the knob he said, “I’ll send you my bill, Doctor Babbel.”
At the bottom of the stairs Stan was out of earshot of Doctor Babbel. She stayed in her office at the top still standing there, probably, as he last saw her, with her mouth open and with her hands held out in front of her like she was carrying a tray of hamburgers. She reminded Stan of his most recent supervisor at McDonald’s. Stan noticed that he didn’t feel depressed at all. He opened the door and walked out into the fine day.
G. M. Goodwin
15 August 2017
Playing Fair and Being Kind 