Good Therapists Can Be Found In Surprising Places
My mother loved dogs, and when she would take
“the challenge of this decade” to the veterinarian for a check-up or
shots, upon her return she would be positively
ebullient.
“Trig got a shot, and I
had a chance to visit my
therapist.”
She was not
referring to a local mental health practitioner but to her dog’s
veterinarian. It seemed that a visit to old Dr Palmer provided Mother with an
attitudinal boost of some sort, something beyond what the companionship of her
four-footeds brought to her
soul.
Old Dr Palmer, as he was
universally known, was in practice with his son, from whom he was quite
different. The father was a Scot – no, not a Scottish descendant, but a
Scot – and he abhorred scientific language and any show of pretense. I
remember once taking a dog to be seen, and Old Dr Palmer examined him carefully
and then said in his deep brogue, “ Aye lad, he’s
stook.”
“What?” I
said.
“He’s
shtook.”
“Shtook, what’s
shtook” I
asked.
Stook..con--sti--pated,”
responded Dr Palmer, making me feel like the village idiot – something I
was then when it came to the dialects of the
Scots.
But to get back to my story.
In my late teens I was quite amused by my mother’s view of her
veterinarian as therapist.
Decades
passed, and then one fine day, a friend gave me a gift certificate for a hair
cut and related activities at a local beauty salon. Full of trepidation, I
darkened the door of this place and was placed into the hands of another Karen,
a young woman from North Dakota.
If
you’ve looked at the picture of me on the home page of my company’s
web-site, you’ll see in a nanosecond that I have no hair to cut. I might
as well take on the career of “Friar Tuck” in any production of
“Robin Hood.”
Undaunted, Karen gave me a shampoo
and cut my hair, all with a straight face, and finished up with a facial. I
looked into a mirror and notice that many of the gray hairs had disappeared and
that I appeared energized, and I felt
terrific.
On the drive home, I
thought of my mother and her therapist old Dr Palmer and realized that I had
found my equivalent. Karen cut my hair for a number of years and then moved
with her husband to the West, and I returned to the inexpensive old-time barber
shop across the street from my office with its aged copies of Popular Science
and such. It was OK, but not OK, if you know what I
mean.
Last year, "Karen of My Scalp"
moved back to the Twin Cities, and even though there’s less hair to cut
and it’s still expensive, the benefits far outweigh the
costs.
And if the day comes when
there is no hair on my head, I’ll still make my appointments with Karen
for a dome facial and polish, because the therapy she provides will still be
worth it.
Mother was right, as usual
– there’s nothing like a good therapist, especially when
they’re not in those “helping professions.”
Posted: Wed - November 26, 2003 at 08:50 PM