The writers, readers and commentors on this blog tend to get wrapped up in political and social disputes and at times it becomes easy to lose sight of the more important things in life. For instance, I have a first floor office that looks onto downtown Champaign and have witnessed big changes over the last ten years. Streams of people buy coffee across the street for prices that could feed all of the hungry down here.
A number of counseling, therapy and group homes are in the area, and it is not uncommon to see other people, who obviously cannot afford Mercedes-Benz coffee, walking down the street engaged in loud conversation with invisible companions. It used to be that these people were easy to pick out because of their shabby dress. Now that we have a couple of software development companies in downtown, shabby dress is no longer an identifying feature for schizophrenia, which is a good thing. But unfortunately, two idenditifiing features remain: no coffee and no cellphone.
Most of the shabbily dressed shouters are carrying cell phones into which they direct their shouting, and expensive coffee with which they punctuate their sentences, which is how we know they are not mentally ill. Actually, some of the shouters, Nextel subscribers presumably, have cell phones that shout back to them so loudly they have to hold them at arms length. This is also considered normal behavior.
At any rate, a number of us began thinking about that narrow divide between us seemingly "normal" people and our schizophrenic neighbors. As best I can tell, that divide is mostly composed of cell phones and expensive coffee. I don’t know about you, but when I have replaced my cell phones, I have not bothered to find a good use for the old one. And if I ever did buy coffee that cost more than a dollar, I would probably just throw the fancy cup away. For that reason, a committee of concerned Catholics, of which I and Dan McCollum are members, is forming a new charity for which we hereby solicit your donations of old cell phones and used premium coffee cups.
From now on, anyone who walks into Catholic Social Services conducting a conversation with no one will be given a free but inoperable cell phone, and will receive instruction on how to hold it up to their mouth when the urge to communicate becomes irresistible. In their other hand, they can hold an empty coffee cup, and thence will immediately become indistinguishable from the other downtown citizens. I expect many of them will actually find jobs with the computer game companies.
These donations are of course tax deductible. It is our hope that the next time you are in public, shouting into a cell phone and holding a three dollar cup of coffee, you will think about other people.
John
reading through this site this morning, I am constantly getting the "I know I read about that last week!" feeling.
I DID read an article last week (New York Times? Wall Street Journal?) about a self-help group in England (?) whose members all hear voices, although not all members of this group are schizophrenic. One of the coping mechanisms suggested to these folks was to keep a cell phone nearby so they could use it when they "talk back" to their voices.
Will have to look this up and post more info. later.
Gee John, you almost had me there until I read "Catholic" and "Dan McCollum" in the same sentence.
schizophrenics! funny stuff!
Sounds like a modern-day version of talk therapy. Add shock therapy to the mix. A quick reboot might help out, and AC power is readily available. Where's Dan McCullum when we need him?
This is a great essay - nice dichotomy between "right" Catholics (right to life, adherence to traditional teachings about human sexuality) and "left" Catholics (CCHD outreach, good works, lack of adherence to sexuality teachings, etc) . I'm assuming McCollum is on the "left" - he must be to get a NOW endorsement (right?). It's edgy, sarcastic, and communicates the dichotomy in an amusing and startling (to some) way. More blogs should be like this.
I'm glad you liked it Bill, but I have a feeling you read a much better essay than I wrote.
John
I was at the vet-med open house, and a lady was walking around with her earphones on that were attached to her cell phone. Presumably that was a female Dr. Doolittle who "talks to the animals."