Guy gets committed to an long-term inpatient psychiatric facility. After a few days there, he began to notice a pattern among the other patients. Every so often, someone would stand up in the common room, get everyone’s attention and shout out a number, followed by uproarious laughter from the crowd.
Guy watches this for a couple of days – someone shouts out a number, everyone else laughs. Finally, curiosity overwhelms him and he asks an orderly for an explanation.
“Oh, most of these guys have been here for years and have very little contact with the outside world,” the orderly explained. “They’ve heard all the jokes over and over, so they finally came up with a numbering system. Somebody shouts a number, everybody remembers the punch line of that particular joke and gets a good laugh. Saves time.”
So over the next few days, the guy gets brave enough to overcome his stage fright and decides to tell a joke. He stands up, clears his throat loudly and gets everyone’s attention.
“Sixteen!” he hollers. No one laughs.
“Uhhh, eleven?” the poor guy ventures uncertainly.
Crickets chirping.
Humiliated, the guy sits back down. Later he snags the same orderly and asks what he had done wrong.
“You know how it is,” shrugged the orderly. “Some people can tell ’em, some can’t.”
The other Sunday night it was rather slow in the ED at Podunk General Hospital, Nail Salon, Tire Repair and Crawfish Hut, and Thin Anemic Nurse was working the night shift – not her usual gig.
Of course, TAN had the heat in the ED nurse’s station cranked to twenty degrees above ambient (ambient in this case being 80 degrees) to compensate for her non-functioning hypothalamus. Rather than stew in my own juices or beg her to turn off the
%^$&# space heater in freakin’ JUNE, I chose Option C, which was to wander across the hall to the psychiatric unit and enjoy the weekly episode of
Thorazine Idol.
I apparently missed the memo, however, informing the staff that this week’s episode had by preempted by a special treat.
A talent show.
Now, you may wonder what can possibly top the entertainment value of a 50-year-old housewife with chronic depression, clad in a hospital gown and wearing Tweety Bird slippers, belting out I Will Survive.
Two words: Interpretive dance.
Even better, interpretive dance fueled by mood-altering medications. The only thing closer to entertainment Nirvana would be sitting in on a group therapy session at Promises. Lindsay and Brittney can’t be much more effed up than these folks.
I’ll not mention any of the specific acts lest it too closely identify any of our patients, but suffice it to say I haven’t been this weirded out since my last visit to a county fair.
Only this time, you’d have to imagine the bearded lady doing a stand up comedy routine and the two-headed calf riding a unicycle while juggling male urinals.
While watching this Theatre of the Bizarre, I was struck by a couple of realizations – the only major difference between many of our patients and your average Hollywood starlet is a boob job and a sizable entourage.
Adding to the surreality was the fact that most of the female staff were apparently channeling Paula Abdul at her gushiest.
I resisted the urge to play Simon Cowell because frankly, it does not behoove one to criticize the performance of a 300 pound behemoth with homicidal tendencies, even if the behemoth does think he has found his inner Shirley Temple with his captivating performance of The Good Ship Lollipop.
Unless of course, the aforementioned behemoth is in six-point leather restraints and you have a loaded Haldol syringe. Then by all means, speak your mind. It’s for his own personal growth.
I had a psychiatric patient once who kept hallucinating skulls floating in the air around him. Leering human skulls with red flames for eyes.
This would have been the perfect outlet for him. He was depressed, homicidal, and paranoid. In other words, Hamlet. Give him a cape and a cardboard sword, and he could have held up one of his imaginary skulls:
“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.”
We’d have a method actor to make Lee Strasberg proud.
These guys need talent coaches for the next competition, a professional muse who can tailor their acts to their own individual psychoses.
Like perhaps a ventriloquist act for the guy with Multiple Personality Disorder. He wouldn’t even need a dummy.
Or maybe our manic guy could spin plates. While juggling something. Yeah, that’d be cool, and right up his alley!
Our escape artist could actually get style points for wriggling out of his straitjacket!
All the megalomaniacs and people with God Complexes could stage their own musical! The title?
Jesus Christ Superstar, of course.
The narcissists could all paint self portraits.
The hallucinating patients could all be taught mime routines. Walking in the wind? Trapped in a box? No problem. They actually feel the wind and see the box!
Clearly I’m on to something here. Methinks the psych unit needs a part time activities coordinator, an idea you can be sure I’ll bring up at the next staff meeting.
I smell me some overtime!
Ambulance Driver Files A Day in the Life | Kelly Grayson
