One of my friends went on a date with a psychologist who treated the morbidly obese, some of whom were bedridden, many on their way to the bed on a rascal device (ie, a motorized scooter), those considering gastric bypass, and so on. It's about choices, the psychologist said. You have to make them see how they have created themselves and have the power to undo it. No surprise, the psychologist was a tiny little dude who picked at his entree, a vegetable medley livened up by tofu. And I also treat their families, he continued. It's our job to adapt to them, not the other way around. My friend did not share this view -- You mean if someone eats themselves into a stupor and has to wash themselves with a rag on a stick, we have to accomodate them? He speared a piece of tofu and said, Yes. Anything less is unfair and unkind. You won't be surprised when I tell you this was their one and only date.
So it was presented to me in the after date dissection, a dating ritual even more important than the date itself. If the date was another night in suck city, the date dissection becomes a date autopsy -- why did the the potential love die on the vine? For Mr. Tiny Dude and my friend, the answer was easy -- they didn't agree on the question of personal responsibility. My friend, a tough customer under the best of circumstances, said she didn't want some tofu-eating babyman who coddled fatties for a living. Don't sugarcoat it for me, I said, and laughed. It's all about choices, she said. But love is not a choice and nobody has to accomodate it. You won't get more room on the plane or an extra helping of dessert. In fact, you may lose your appetite altogether, and you won't mind a bit.
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Why was I born handsome instead of rich?" Ralphie on The Sopranos
Cocktail Hour
White Christmas
1 glass of champagne
1 splash of cognac
1 sugarcube
Serve chilled with a strawberry garnish.
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Sunday! Dear readers, thank you for all the comments. Keep your heads up in the Christmas rush!
13 comments:
Zee date autopsies are in zee love morgue.
She means the rush to leave Michigan. Loser.
Accomodations don't come until after love happens, or at least most people don't think of it until it's too late.
If they can't even get through a first date without a battle, there's no reason to go any further. My first clue to this guy being a bad first date is the tofu thing, yuck!!!
Interesting post so many subjects within two short paragraphs.
Proves my point all shrinks, no matter thier specialty, are nuts. Was his name Richard Simmons by any chance or just a wannabee. Did he wear red, white and blue shorts on the date and talk like he was hyper caffinated?
Hard heart in your girlfriend, Jaysus..."My way is right and no room for compromise." Must be a member of Mensa. I hope she ate a 20 oz. Steak and the tasty fat , a baked potato smothered in real butter and the only vegetable on her plate was chives in the butter.Now that would have made for a wonderful postmortem date story. the absolute looks of disgust that came with every bite of tofu and meat.
Morbid obesity? Where does that start? 10 pounds over your BFI, 20, 30,200,500. How many people do you or I or anyone know who really takes personal responsibility for what they are? Most have a reason beyond responsibility for not being what we think they should be. But that does not mean they are not what they are supposed to be in life.
I know what I am and what I have become over my walk and the responsibility for all my choices since I was 12 are mine both the good and the evil. yet how many of the 6,000,000,000+ people on the planet are personally responsible for what they are?
Born to poverty in an area that has a piss poor education system and no father or mother to teach them right from wrong but only able to teach them what they know?
How much responsibility do those children have for seeing no way out of that life than through selling themselves to prostitution, drugs, crime? Or children dragged out of thier village and told fight for us or we will kill you and your whole family.
Is there really any personal responsibility left? If so every person who voted to put George W. Bush in office TWICE is personally responsible for 3000 dead American children and over 100,000 dead Iraqi's.
Love (You know by now I change subjects quickly)I have been dating the same woman for 25 years now and I swear there is very little we agree on but Paul Bunyon ain't big enough to chop down our tree that grew from two little sprigs that intertwined. And the fucker would be dead before the first swing of th ax ever hit the tree bark.
No one knows when love is born, there may be labor pains and people quit while others just figure fuck it this is a part of the maturing of what eventually becomes love.
But before you can even think about love you better HAVE peace, it is the water of those two sprigs.
Peace
Marks sober movie suggestion
"what's Eating Gibert Grape?"
Your didactic homilies make me weep, Michelle.
Dear Michelle, such a charming view and post, as always, and I enjoy your White Christmas drink idea and would be glad to treat you to some any time no questions asked. Therapy means my ex-wife to me and so cast to the rubbish bin but if you were the therapist I would gladly tell you all of my secrets. To you lovely girl, Bravo!
What's tofu? Do you put Marlon Brando food on it?
I think the little psychologist could be played to great effect by Danny DaVito.
I always tell people to test their therapists. One has to find one that fits. Too many people I know will go to a therapist and then when things start getting rough, when the people will have to start making some change in their lives, they bail,claiming: "He did no good for me. I don't trust psychologists. Waste of time."
I am always suspicious of people who generalize and discredit people in the fields of social work or psychology. It usually means they don't know enough about the professions to make educated statements, and so make sweeping statements that benefit nobody.
Usually many of these same people make the same sweeping statements about teachers.
"I am always suspicious of people who generalize and discredit people in the fields of social work or psychology. It usually means they don't know enough about the professions to make educated statements, and so make sweeping statements that benefit nobody."
Personally I was raised by a social worker who rose to the top of her agency and was one of the first women in Michigan to not be a white male to run anon profit agency. This after working her way up from overloaded case worker beginning in 1948.
And I have, like medical doctors, seen enough shrinks who all lead me to believe that there is a generality to them, whether they be psychologists, psychiatrists or fame seekers like Dr. Nil.
Most are in independent practice and have more of a relationship to that practice paying for the Benz or Jag, than they do loyalty to their "patients"; especially since the state and federal government has decimated the mental health budget
If lack of schooling is "not knowing enough about the professon" then I am ignorant, but if experience is education then I have a PhD. in seeing and have enough sanity left me to not make "sweeping generalities about nothing I(sic) know about."
But when I have had the multiple experience of a lifetimes worth of "umm hmm and how did that make you feel?" with a variey of the shamans of our day then I can form a rational opinion on what I think when they read the entrails of their dissected patient. Which mostly, at least in my case, was full of shit and after a year couldn't pull my face out of a crowd of ten
Peace
walking man, I don't know if your comments are criticisms of a profession or criticisms of captialism. Or criticisms derived from unresolved personal issues.
I can't comment on why you hold the issues you hold. It would be presumptuous of me.
We all have biases. We are all entitled to the same. Some of us feel general loathing for people based on religious or political views. While those views may give us the security we seek, or help us frame ourselves, it doesn't make them objectively true.
Mr. Sternberg I don't know if you will ever`see this or not as you said you would quit posting. yet for myself i have no unresolved issues, i am what i am.
I live with no fear of anything, no worry, no doubt, no anxiety, but rather perfectly objective belief that God himself has taught me to become what i have become which is a man of the spirit. Call it what you will; some say it is Bhudda others say it s total incurable insanty..either or makes no difference to me.
I have no bias on how a person chooses to make their living, i wound up fixing cars and was godamn great at it but I never had to keep a customer coming back for years sometimes to resolve an issue with their vehicle.
granted the car is not the soul but I believe that my criticism of shrinks in general is objective truth i learned through experience and if they choose to practice their particular form of psychiatric voodo to primarily benefit their own comfort, then that form of capitalism is a scam.
and I loathe no one except the present members of the political administration but that is a subjective loathing also from being raised by a social worker in a liberal environment.
So now that we have resolved this issue you may move on to another assumption of someone else's mind because you like them who have never spoken with me have displayed a subjectie bias
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