Seeking Advice From My Best Friend

You see Sym, people just don't understand me...

... they think I'm crazy!

I trust you. What do you think? 

One-Upmanship

(Sorry! It's  a repost from 6.4.2010)

I've had some thunks of late ... some disturbing ... some pleasant ... some you ain’t not never gonna hear about. But some thunks are stickier than others. Like one about all them folks whose lives appear to revolve around their medical conditions and complaints.

In my job it’s a regular thing to listen to horror stories about, for instance, operations and the scars they leave.

Never, however, have I been witness to a loud “keeping up with the Jones’s” argument about whose operation had been the most dramatic/horrific/traumatic such as was the case when I visited Burger King at Culverhouse Cross, Cardiff.

It went something like this;

Woman 1: “Scar? I’ve got wrinkles bigger than that”

Woman 2: “But you never saw the size of the swelling I got from the infection”

Woman 1: “Don’t talk to me about infections! I was in the Heath (hospital) for a month because of the infection they gave me”

Woman2: “They kept me in for six weeks with mine”

Woman1: “Yeah, but I had to go in for another two weeks ‘cos it flared up again”

I couldn’t help but think of Les Dawson and Roy Barrowclough (not the one-upmanship video I was looking for,but still funny) as I listened, nay, eavesdropped on their conversation. But it wasn't really the medical discussion that sticks in my mind, but rather the ‘one-upmanship’ which I found very amusing.

In recent months and years, I have observed, and probably even got myself caught up in, any amount of ‘one-upmanship’ contests. They range from the absurd to the sublime covering such subjects as garden furniture, children, PC’s, religion and ... dare I say it ... dogs.

And it is dogs which drag me into the depths of ‘one-upmanship’ competition. Alas, like many dog lovers, I am incredibly proud of my dogs; their gentleness, devotion and skills at such mundane things as ‘sit’ and 'down’. And to my shame, I have uttered those dreaded words “Ah, but my dogs can ...” a number of times.

Anyone else out there ever done it? Go one ... admit it!

We ALL do it cos they are family, after all.

Secret Monologues!

I suppose, now that I sit down to share another of my secrets with you, that everyone does it.

And it's not the same as talking to yourself, is it?

Maybe you have found yourself doing it too!

I refer, of course, to the silent monologues that we carry out in the privacy of our own heads whilst conversing with another.

I seem to do it all the time and it's becoming a constant worry to my sanity, which is always on watch for any signs of diminished capacity .... well, at least of any increased signs.

"Don't say that out loud" says my sanity. "Shhhh"!

No, the silent monologues are a worry to me.

But, so far, I haven't allowed them to become actual conversations with myself, have I?

No!

I don't openly discuss anything with anyone but those that stand before me, do I?

Of course you don't!

No!

The monologues go something like this;

Me:      "Hello! How are you today?"
            Look at that zit on his nose! That thing's gonna go pop any second. 

Them:   "Hi, I'm fine! How are you?"

Me:      "I'm cool"
            or at least I would be if that zit wasn't so close. 
            I don't wanna get covered in puss when it blows!

Them:   "Well, I hope you a nice day".  

Me:      No you don't! "Yeah, you too!" like I really care.

Ok, so maybe that wasn't the best example, but that is, more or less, how they go.

Hmmmmm!

Perhaps I shouldn't have told you.

Don't you look at me like that!

Like what?

Stop it!

Me? What'd I do?

Boys! Don't argue!

The Elephant On The Roof!

We decided, my client an I, that an elephant jumping from the roof of a six storey building would make a very big splash on the road below.

We also decided that we would not like to be in the clean up crew that had to deal with it.

At the time we were eating bacon sandwiches in a small cafe just up a side street of a welsh coastal village.

I no longer remember how we, in our minds that is, managed to get the elephant on the roof or why we would want it to commit suicide, but somehow we did.

I remember my client had just told me about a row over a cup of tea and the ownership thereof.  There were words, the tea was spilled and, for a while, he and a friend stopped speaking to one another.

Then suddenly .... there was an elephant and it was on the roof about to jump.

But how we got to that point is a mystery to me. I must have dozed off!

When working with people with learning difficulties, you have to be ready for sudden changes in conversational direction.  A degree of mental agility equal to that of a gymnast is required in order to keep pace at times.

One moment, as was the case recently, I would find myself discussing the benefits of a nice cup of tea on a cold day, only to have the topic of conversation change in mid sentence to election manifestos and why none of the major parties include a policy of 'being more helpful to people who have lost their train ticket'.

You never see the changes coming ... but you have to try to react as if they are normal when they do.
You have to make the flow from one subject to another seem .... well, seamless, and although you may think the conversation you are having is illogical and disjointed, you have to remember that to your client it is all logical, well thought through and in need of being said.

Meanwhile, back on the roof, the elephant is still teetering on the edge.

I have to admit that I made no attempt to talk the elephant down to safety as our topic had already been changed to the subject of buses (why do they have to go down narrow lanes?) and had moved on to post offices (why is the government closing them all?).

I wonder if the elephant is still up there?