It's 4:00 A.M. again, and I'm up......

And sometimes, like this morning, I'm damned glad to be awake and in the present, rather than still dreaming, and stuck in the past of a quarter of a century ago or more, in a bad dream created around some old work situation. I know some of us don't find our work to be the greatest joy of our lives, but having nightmares about it 25 or 30 years later verges on the bizarre and ridiculous, for sure. My psychiatrist, if I still had one, would probably have a real 'field day' with that one. I can almost imagine some of his probable comments.

I don't think I ever did discover what it would be like to spend a full hour's visit with him just discussing my own problems and what to do about them. That's because his phone kept ringing, and he kept answering it, and on the other end apparently were a grand collection of nuts, bolts, and twinkies in need of urgent reassurance that the world in fact was really not ending, it only seemed so from the other's perspective of the moment, which, obviously, was more than a little distorted, for any number of the usual common reasons, such as bad habits, bad sex, bad mates, or insufficient habits, sex, or mates. 

Along with all those sad cases, there were a few more interesting ones from other doctors calling to ask our expert what to do about some patient they had, and what they'd tried already, and not achieved the desired results from it. Those were a little like being a fly on the wall while two professionals are discussing what to do about flies on the wall when those are caught in a bottle and attempts are made at behavioral modification of the little bastards, with or without their own co-operation.

Sometimes, I got bored with listening to all that, and opted instead for playing psychiatrist myself, by attempting to analyze my analyst. I learned, for example, that he prefers blondes because he thinks they are more open to having fun; he likes sailing, and usually rents a sailboat for about a month each year, usually near Tahiti, where he decorates its deck with one of those aforementioned blondes of the fun-loving variety, and sails around the islands there, doing his damnedest to forget all those screwballs he left behind in Canada, needing his continued attention. Until one day, his month is over, and reality kicks in, and it's back to good old Obscurity, and that full calendar of cereal - (whatever isn't fruit or nuts is flakes!) - for another eleven months. 

But it isn't all doom and gloom. He had a very comfy office, complete with a black leather sofa, and he drove a recent-model Jaguar sedan, and he was just handsome enough that perhaps half the gals in town would go all soft and mushy whenever he walked into a room..... and I never did decide whether or not he really was as smart as he claimed, or was just a hell of a good actor with a prescription pad, and a nice line of patter with which to bamboozle the rubes and boobs who ended up on that sexy leather sofa across the room from his elegant and highly-polished desk. Maybe, I was just jealous. I couldn't even catch the kind of women he discarded, in case that's how we're scoring the game. But wherever you are, Dominic, I hope you live long and prosper. And if we ever meet again, I promise I'll leave the motorcycle and the Superman T-shirt at home......because I've already proved 'There's more than one way to skin a cat.'