Saturday, April 2, 2011

Pierre Meets a Psychiatrist



When I discovered that one of my customers is a psychiatrist I told him that I was a defrocked priest but that he mustn’t tell anyone. I’m still not quite sure why I told him this, I suspect it was because I’ve always liked the sound of the word ‘defrocked’ but who cares, it churned the conversation up a bit and he soon wanted to know why I’d been defrocked. I said it was complicated and since I didn’t suffer the curse of complexity I was very confused. He didn’t buy it and said so by glaring at me. Well, I wasn’t intimidated in the least because his wife was in the other day complaining about him and when a man’s wife tells you things about him, he loses all power over you. Especially when she tells you that her husband is afraid of sunlight. I just couldn’t resist so I asked her, you think he’s a vampire? and she said don’t be stupid, he just thinks that every cell in his body is a suntan away from erupting into a spongy tumor.

So I just glared back at him and said that defrocking was a very private thing and I can’t even spell embezzlement so why would I do it and anyway I needed the money for my gambling habit. And speaking of gambling, I said, just to change the subject a bit while I rang up his purchase, don’t you think, I said, that we should prepare children for the unpredictability of life by teaching them to play poker, starting maybe in grade school. Poker would teach the little creatures about the nature of risk and how the house always wins in the end. It would be more instructive than the statistics and ethics courses they’ll eventually cheat their way through. The good doctor counted his change, with more care then necessary I thought, and as he left asked me if I was off my medication. Some people.

3 comments:

  1. Pierre, I think Spring is bringing out the creative side in you!

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  2. To teach or not to teach my 10 yr old sister to play poker. Hmm...

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  3. Pierre, you should have told him the truth about yourself; he would have gotten enough material to write a treatise, which perhaps you could eventually have tried to sell back to him...

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