Slap Me Silly, Baby, I Think I’m Crackin’ Up

“Paranoia strikes deep, into your life it will creep, it starts when you’re always afraid, you step out of line, the man come and take you away…” Buffalo Springfield lyrics

Smack! She slapped him. Hard. The windows rattled. His face vibrated.

The tension had been building, we saw it gaining steam. It exploded, at breakfast.

It was one of those things that happens; something so out of character it’s almost surreal. It ended as quickly as it started. If it had been a gun, his wife would have been blowing smoke from the barrel before we swallowed the first mouthful of grits.

Victor sat stunned, arrested in mid-bite of a buttery biscuit. Her timing was perfect. We were all virtual and collective recipients of the spontaneous outburst. All ten of us, sitting around the table, being lashed like slaves by Victor’s extrapolations on the tribulations of marriage and morality of today’s youth. After all, he was a minister, and was to conduct the afternoon wedding ceremony. Shouldn’t he know these things?

She didn’t stop there. She unleashed a barrage of vicious words. They lacerated Victor’s skull and shook him back from the edge of insanity. Frost formed on my scrambled eggs. My link sausage shuddered in response.

She concluded, “Victor, shut up! Your neuroses are showing.” And some other choice, unprintable utterances. He did, but shrank measurably in the process.

We clammed up, too. Conversation morphed into anxious stares. What’s next, we wondered. But that was it. The ending was boringly anticlimactic. She resumed her waffle breakfast, like slapping him around was an everyday discipline to break up his mental windmill farms.We shrugged it off. Breakfast resumed.

Preachers take certain prerogatives, like sermonizing all matters moral, and much that is not. Victor was especially adroit in dogmatizing the perils of sin. His vivid constructs led one to wonder if his knowledge was carnal-based or surrogate. Neuroses do that to a man. Which prompted his wife to pop him, to jerk him back to earth.

Neurosis is an insidious affliction. Weddings breed them. Who ever got married without wondering, “I know what I’m giving, but what am I getting?” The very thought is the conception of neurosis. At least burkas are not overly popular in America, yet. Arranged marriages are the likely cause of all Arab unrest…veiled, wrapped packages, like Motel 6 mattresses, can hide hideous surprises. Neuroses hatch there.

It didn’t help that Victor and Sue spent six hours together in a car the day before. Neuroses fester in confined environments. Too much spousal togetherness is the petri dish for neurosis. Which is why Steve Jobs invented the iPad…bridge and shopping-on-the-go.

Neuroses are everywhere. Even in Congress. Weirdoes and malcontents have infiltrated the slimy legislative halls. Nothing is predictable. Governing is a crap shoot. My neurotic apprehensions grow by the minute, anticipating an outbreak of pandemonium in the streets and a run on assault rifles.

We all have our share of neuroses and paranoia. I first noticed mine when my mother took me on an escalator. Psychosis gripped me. I trembled when stepping on the moving stair. She said a small boy was eaten alive and shredded like confetti when his foot got caught in the stair’s teeth. Now I take no chances. I jump into the middle of the moving shredder and jump off at the end. I have been often photographed and occasionally interviewed concerning this neurosis.

Paranoia lurks under my bed at night. I fear a clawed hand will reach out for my foot. Same holds true for swimming in murky lakes or rivers. I refuse to touch the bottom out of obsessive fear that something is waiting for my foot.

I recently stumbled over a neurosis in Winn Dixie. It was hiding among the blueberries. ‘Organic,’ the sign said. I questioned the produce manager’s veracity. He insulted my mother. I told him where to put his berries.

Elevators bring out my worst neuroses. What if you’re trapped inside a high-rise, free-falling cubicle in the midst of a mosh pit of accountants? Is this how you want to spend your final seconds, possibly even soiling yourself in public for neglecting the restroom before getting on?

Victor’s neurosis started this. But he concluded it with the cunning artifice of a Master Nattering Neurotic. After reading the “for better or worse, richer or poorer” section, he warned the newly-weds to hedge their bets by only vowing “Maybe I Do.” With neuroses, the ink is never dry!

So many neuroses, so little oversight. Slap us silly, baby, before we all crack up!

Bud Hearn
January 5, 2013