Dr. Jedidiah’s Diary
Dr. Jedidiah is a psychiatrist who loves
traveling, meeting new people, and exploring different cultures. As a single
father who lost phis wife to drug overdose 10 years ago, he has not been his
old perky self for the last decade. During those hard years, he has met
hundreds of, thousands of people from various walks of life around all over the
world. Meeting new people and listening to their stories outside his office
have given him different feelings from the ones through the formal encounter
groups or being truly honest with himself. Here is Dr. Jedidiah’s monologue
that has left him with some food for thoughts in life….or a fodder to justify
his own mistakes in the past.
Episode # 63. Fortuneteller Amy vs.
Psychiatrist Jedidiah
The moment I stepped into her fortune telling place, I
doubted my previous feelings and thoughts about the palm reader Amy. I had wished
to trust her earnest attitude about her occupation, but I got a gut feeling that
she was a fraud on entering the place. It was not because she looked like a
scam palm reader wearing obnoxiously colorful garments, but rather because she was
trying hard to look too serious as she was basting turkey in the corner
of her shop. It was the strangest Thanksgiving that I’d had in my life. I was saying
to myself ‘What kind of boondoggle is this? What am I doing here on a
Thanksgiving holiday?’
Amy was a 45 year-old fortune teller that I met at a
broadcast station. I was invited to a panel debate show as a psychiatrist, and
the day’s topic was “Mind Reading and Happy Life”. Amy was also one of the debaters
on the show. I was the only one that did not know how famous she was as a palm
reader. The other panelists told me she had been writing a column on a monthly
magazine and appearing on TV live shows to tell about the future of random
folks’ from the audience many times for the past several years. Since I had never
been superstitious or a believer of surreal phenomena in life, I had trouble
keeping myself from saying “Fiddlesticks! Are you guys really sold
on her obvious skullduggery?” After an hour of our heated debate on
the show, we had a couple of people from the audience who volunteered to ask
for their fortune and future. Amy told each one of the volunteer guests not
only about their future life but a bit of their past in detail as well. I was
surprised to see the guests’ alarmed faces when they heard Amy’s words interlarded
with a lot of details of their past lives that she could never know. Even
to me, who had been totally against all different kinds of gimmicks or
tricks to mislead and deceive people’s mind, Amy’s banausic but magnetic
way of speaking was good enough to make any doubts or disbelief gradually deliquesce
to the point of blank state of mind. Her presence was pièce
de résistance on the show. I started to find myself stultified
in the middle of this failed debate. I felt that I already reached the moot
point of the day’s debate.
Since that day of perplexing TV debate show, I became
confused and held myself somewhat aloof from any type of ‘in-public’ appearances
on mass media. Even among my fellow psychiatrists, I felt myself like a decoupled
heel from the solid forefoot area of a shoe. Then one day I got a call from
Amy. She invited me to her palm reading house over the Thanksgiving weekend.
Her invitation was like a bitter remembrancer of my failed debate show,
but I inadvertently said that I’d come to her place. She served a huge turkey to
celebrate the special day and handed me the carving knife, saying “Please do
not use this knife to kill me. It is for carving this turkey on this memorable
day.” Returning her smile, I came to look down at some photos and some memos of
personal history and information in the corner of her counseling table. Those
were familiar faces that I saw on the debate show. Amy said she had been
provided beforehand with the personal information about each of the volunteer guests
and all the other panelists on the show. “Dr. J, the show was perfectly
preplanned and coordinated. You were the only one who wasn’t in the loop,
because they knew you’d be a naysayer to their plans, and most of all, having
one innocent panel debater would make the show more realistic.”
Amy was told by the staff from the broadcast station not
to leak what happened behind the curtain, but she wanted to confide in me.
Before I asked her why, she went on to say that life was like a kaleidoscope. “Someone
believes others, and those others deceive the believers. Well…team work makes a
dream work.” I was speechless, but still wanted to ask her to show me my future
that night.
Expressions
1. to baste…: pour
juices or melted fat over (meat) during cooking in order to keep it moist
2. boondoggle:
waste
money or time on unnecessary or questionable projects
3. fiddlesticks: something
of little value/ trifle
4. to
be sold on …: to be confident in or convinced about
something's viability, veracity, etc., often to the point of being
enthusiastically supportive of it
5. skullduggery: underhanded
or unscrupulous behavior; trickery
6. to
interlard… with ~: “to load up/ to pepper something with ~"
7. banausic:
(*somewhat pejoratively) not operating on a refined or elevated level; mundane
8. to
deliquesce: to dissolve/ to melt away
9. pièce
de pièce de résistance: the most
remarkable/ important feature
10. to stultify …: cause
(someone) to appear foolish or absurd
11. moot point: a
fact that doesn't matter anymore because it's not relevant to the current
situation
12. remembrancer: a
person with the job or responsibility of reminding others of something; a
chronicler
13. naysayer: one
who denies, refuses, opposes, or is skeptical or cynical about something
14. to confide in someone: to
tell personal or private things to someone
Wow
ReplyDeleteHow in the world do you come up with these stories ?
Haha.....my head is always full of wild imaginations. 😜🤣
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