Ninjutsu

I see a therapist. (Make any and all judgments now so that we can continue un-hindered.) We have monthly appointments, sometimes we work on CBT and sometimes I go on existential and/or nihilistic rants and sometimes we sit in silence while I stare at my fingernails, although recently, we've been playing Scrabble.



I went through several therapists in an impressively short period of time but prior to that, all of my knowledge about psychiatry and/or seeing a therapist came from Jamie Lee Curtis' character in "Freaky Friday" and reading Gary Larson's The Far Side. Since my understanding was limited to talking cows and a movie that involved Lindsay Lohan, I had no idea what to expect the first time we walked into the waiting room of a psychiatry practice.

It was disappointingly normal.

Finally, after about three years of sitting in ugly chairs and wondering what was wrong with all of the other normal-looking people, it happened - the experience I'd been waiting for.
And it was beautiful.


There were four of us in the waiting room on that particular day. Normally, I plop myself down directly next to another patient even if there are a bunch of empty seats so that I have at least one last-minute exposure to tell my therapist about. On this particular day my selected victim had been called in for his appointment right after I sat down, so I was alone against the back wall. A guy who could've been anywhere from 17 to 24 sat opposite me, sexting his girlfriend. (Wild guess.) Perpendicular to us against the main wall was a generic middle-aged white couple.

I was reading the same sentence in my book over and over again when the door from the offices into the waiting room opened and this rather large, blonde guy in a dirty t-shirt and sweatpants walked out. I was reminded of a member of Count Olaf's entourage detailed by Lemony Snicket in Series of Unfortunate Events; the large person whom the orphans could never identify as a man or a woman. This guy was obviously a man, but everything else about him was ambiguous. Age, mood, sanity, homelessness, et cetera. He had short blonde hair and now that I think about it, kind of looked like he had been drawn by the previously mentioned cartoonist, Gary Larson.

He was giving off some seriously weird vibes, but I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt since I can be pretty weird myself. First, he turned around and tried to go back into the offices but could not - there's a lock that you have to enter a key code into, which had always seemed unnecessary to me until just now. Being denied access, he turned and leaned his weight on the counter by the window, engaging the reluctant receptionist in conversation.

"Have you ever heard of a side-effect of schizophrenia that gives you the power to learn martial arts in your sleep?"

At this point we all thought he was making a weird joke. Sexting Guy and I shared an amused glance.

"Because when I woke up this morning, I knew Ninjutsu."

I was still under the impression that he was joking, but then he set his jumbo-fast-food-beverage down on the counter and in a miraculous demonstration of agility for his heftiness, suddenly chopped the air with his hand in a wide arc, stumbling forward a little bit as a result of the wild motion.

The four of us in the waiting room all jolted simultaneously. Sexting Guy and I stared at each other wide-eyed, the situation having officially crossed over from funny to scary.

The receptionist was impressively composed. "Wow! Look at that."

"It's the strangest thing - I've never had any training." The guy flailed around a little more doing nothing that looked like "the martial art, strategy, and tactics of unconventional warfare and guerrilla warfare as well as the art of espionage purportedly practiced by the shinobi." (I google-d Ninjutsu when I got home.) He motioned around to the four of us and said, "I could take on everyone in here." (The alarming truth is that he was probably right.)

The receptionist quickly changed the subject. The next thing I recall the man talking about was astral projection, which he claimed to practice regularly.

He had allegedly done the following things through out-of-body experiences in the spirit world:

• Met what I suspect were some anime characters
• Learned ninja secrets
• Lost his virginity.

Just when I had come to my senses and realized that I needed to remember everything this guy said for storytelling purposes later on, an older, female version of him strode through the door from the back offices and dragged him behind her out of the waiting room without breaking her stride. 

For a few minutes we sat in stunned silence, unsure of the appropriate way to react. (If anyone understands how un-funny mental illness can be, it's a bunch of people in a psychiatrist's waiting room. Then again, I think it's absolutely necessary to find humor in hardship.)

Finally, the middle-aged man broke the silence. Quietly and seriously, he said to the receptionist,


"I am also a master of Ninjutsu."