Psychobabble

Sure, everyone is special. Every single person on this planet is unique. Except when that special, unique person has a problem. Especially if that special, unique person has a personal problem. In that case, just about everybody has that self-same inability to help themselves. Remember I said JUST ABOUT everybody.

I'm certainly like JUST ABOUT everybody else in that self-same regard. What I am though, is very good at helping OTHER people find out how they can solve their problems or what they want to do or not do about them. Good enough to think that if I had been smart I would have gone and gotten myself some high faluted degree at some snotty university and made big bucks listening to people's miseries hour-after-highly-paid-hour, dispensing educated and intelligent (right) advice, and prescribing drugs that may or may not screw up a person's chemical makeup.

Of course I wasn't that smart. So here I am going by instinct and the tired-but-true method: TRIAL AND ERROR. I'm sure it is mighty reassuring to know that. There really isn't that much of a secret to it. It's just a whole lot of listening. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after -- well, hopefully it doesn't have to go that long. Eventually, the patient, (I'll call him, her, it a patient just to make things easy. For whom? Well, I don't really know. Me maybe.) will realize all by him-, her-, itself what the hell is wrong with him, her, it. Next, the patient will realize that he -- oh, you know the drill -- can do something. Then, the patient will learn what options he has. And finally, the patient will actually go out and do the fandango. Problem solved. Or not.

Yeah, yeah. It's not all going to be that way.

There will be patients who need to hear himself talk. If I'm lucky he will just get as sick and tired of hearing himself yak as I've most certainly would have after hearing version number seventeen of him being dumped for some hunky scuba instructor she met while he was wooing that sexy young thing in a non-exsistent red bikini at the Mango Bar during their honeymoon in Boracay, Philippines.

Of course by the eighteen-hundredth telling, everyone and their mother would know why he was dumped. If only because he's become irritating, the story stale, and we all want to hear about something else. Like which dive shop the hunky scuba diver worked for. OR it'll eventually dawn on him that he sounds like a total idiot and will shut up without the added incentive a revolver to his temple can make. The question of the gun being loaded or not won't even come up.

And IF I'm luckier, the patient just needs to get whatever is bothering him into words and share it with someone with a sympathetic ear, will bend that -- meaning my -- ear, and quietly go away until the next episode of murder and mayhem that happens to lay itself at his doorstep.

There are other types of patients. There are those that don't go anywhere without prodding. Hell, sometimes, they need the whole circus! Should I say farm? Cattle dogs, cattle prods, cowboys on horses or jeeps, maybe even a helicopter or two. Wire fences delineate the land. Do not tresspass. Tresspassers will be trampled by the single bovine who can't see pass its nose.

People vary.

Problems vary.

Solutions vary.

I listen.

When the tried and true don't work, I listen even harder because there will come a time when I really can't do anything. Except maybe hold the patient's hand long enough to get him to one of those people with the high faluted degree from some snotty university that make big bucks listening to people's miseries hour-after-highly-paid-hour. HE can dispense the educated and intelligent advice, and prescribe drugs that may or may not screw up the person's chemical makeup.

And I would've done my token good deed.