HUMOR

I Don’t Go To Therapy To Make Friends. I Go To Win.

Part I

I’ve been increasingly unable to enjoy people. My social circle has shrunk to the point that my cats own a devastatingly significant percentage of the stock.

When you spend too much time with cats and no one else, you start seeing the world the way they do:

“Will you serve me? Can I kill you?”

I’ve had therapy before, but this time (2 months ago) I wanted a master therapist, a monk on a mountain who would let me do the talking, politely interrupt me now and then to say, “Brilliant,” and then give me the answer: “It’s not you. You’re unquestionably the best. It’s everyone else.”

So, I sought a mountain topper of the field. A psychologist. The word scares me with its power and German length. Good. I wanted scary-good help. I’ve learned that if it doesn’t scare you, you’re not doing it right.

I went with the psychologist closest to me because I wanted help as fast as possible. I didn’t realize, though, that I’d picked a forensic psychologist, the kind who proves the cat wasn’t insane at the time of the crime and therefore gets the chair.

During our first meeting, I noticed beautiful art all over his office: samurai, ninjas, pandas, bamboo trees. Also, a Vietnam veteran hat. Lastly, a poster showing a boat on a horribly stormy sea. A quote by Homer (the blind one) was in the water under the boat. It said something like,

Life means if you give up you die. What’s happiness got to do with it? Hey, Odysseus, you pervy cow, you.

I didn’t understand what most of the quote meant, but I’m not willing to read Homer to find out. I don’t want to get well that badly.

I learned in our first meeting that the forensic psychologist has a black belt, an IV-league granddaughter, and is a forensic psychologist.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, it was my turn to talk about me. He gave me an opening when he started reading questions off a piece of paper. The first was this: