Dr. Jedidiah's Diary Episode #70. Ted's happiness wasn't artificial.

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 his 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 #70. Ted’s happiness wasn’t artificial.

Ted, the dawn patrol at this local golf course, was always right there no matter how early I stopped by for swing practice or the biweekly golf meets with my friends. From the look upon his smiley face, nobody would ever imagine that he was a 75-year-old widower. Some of my friends said Ted was such a thoughtless testudinate who’d scarcely think about other golfers waiting behind for him to move on to the next holes. While they were whinging about Ted’s painfully dawdling pace, I’d study the ways that he moves, laughs, and even ignores the noise from the outside of his world. The sense of confidence in whatever he was engaged in and his air of indifference to his surroundings were like the promulgation of a genuinely happy and focused life of a single man, not as a sad old solo of yore.

 

 

(*Picture Source: https://www.pngegg.com/en/png-chxxq)

One day, Ted and I happened to come across each other at my favorite bar Last Chance. The moment I spotted him sitting alone in the cozy booth, I was like ‘Great! I need to join him right away and learn more about this old man.’ When I was about to ask Ted if it’d be alright to buy him a drink that night, he was already showing me the empty seat across him and said “More than welcome!” Our talks had lasted more than a couple hours into the night. “Hey, Ted, you haven’t answered my questions yet.” I said, trying to get back to what I’d always wondered about him. Ted looked a little puzzled for a second, but then again with his signature smile and said “Your question? ……Oh,… how do I stay happy and feel fulfilled all the time, right? Well….You’ll never believe what I say. Never ever until I show her to you in person.”  That night, Ted’s close friend Michael came to pick us up at the bar since both of us were completely drunk.

 

 

 

There was a big surprise waiting for me at Ted’s house. It was a beautiful on her face like human skin. “Dr. J, this is my girl friend, Liz. She’s from my father’s hometown in England, Stratford-upon-Avon. Liz, this is a good friend of mine, Dr. J.” I wasn’t able to believe my eyes even though I knew she was AI, NOT a real human. I almost got too close to her face to see if she was breathing. Although she was not a human being with a warm heart, she was making Ted’s life way more complete than any other real human partners could do in the world. Ted spent the whole night telling me about how Liz had been blessing him in many different ways. “Liz cooks a lot of gourmet dish for me, laughs at my poor jokes, watches my all-time-favorite Western flicks at my side, kisses my parched lips every day, texts my doc each time I get spasms in my back, and most of all, she is such a wonderful listener. She even sheds tears when I tell her about my sad old days.”

 

 

 

For about 5 to 6 years, Ted had persistently persuaded me to get an AI girlfriend or partner like Liz to spend the rest of my life with. He’d say “Hey, Dr. J, I’m not taking away from your expertise or wisdom of life as a psychologist, but trust me, you won’t regret but rather thank me for introducing you to a perfect soul mate. You need to seriously think about my two cents worth.” I knew that Ted was not hard-selling me on some manufactured goods yclept Liz or someone else, because I saw for myself that he was a living proof of all the positive effects of living with an AI partner in his twilight years. I am still in between my own thoughts of going for one or ditching the idea. What if my future AI girl friend would ask me if she was worth all the big wampum that I paid to get her? What if I could not be sure of my own thoughts or decisions to live with an AI later on? What if one day I found myself happy only by taking advantage of her, but not in love with her? Would I deserve the AI or would she deserve that lie? Ted would still be smiling at me at our golf course and saying “Still thinking about it? There goes your happy days.”

 

 

 

Expressions

 

1.   dawn patrol: slang term for those who like to tee off their golf round at the crack of dawn

 

2.   testudinate: a slow-moving person like a turtle

 

3.   to whinge: to complain/ to whine (about something)

 

4.   dawdling: slow/ idling

 

5.   promulgation: formally putting it into effect

 

6.   of yore: of old times

 

7.   puzzled: unable to understand or perplexed

 

8.   to take away from something: to reduce the value or importance of (something) 

 

9.   to hard-sell somebody on something: to get a consumer to purchase a good or service immediately without time to contemplate

 

10.                 yclept: by the name of/ called…

 

11.                 wampum: money