M O N D A Y I S J U S T A N O T H E R D A Y
A series of short stories
By: Paul William Fassett
“People are stupid. Most of them, that is. For example, a lot of people can’t tell the difference between entertainment and fact. When one gets all mixed up with another, the line between them gets blurred, and the part that’s supposed to be nuanced becomes...” Ernie gestured with his hands, and his arms flapped up and down like a bird. “inflated. That’s why you got guys out here, on the street, talkin’ about rich guys stealin’ from poor guys, and politicians are out there fucking kids. Meanwhile, there’s a whole world out there that aint like that, and they can’t see it. They all think the world is falling apart. A lot of them think the world was better when they were young.” The circle was quietly waiting as Ernie took the edge of his finger nail and dug something out of his ear. He must have got something because he flung it somewhere on the carpet. “That’s it.” The shrink tilted his head ever so slightly. “I’m done now.”
The shrink put his papers on his lap. “Why are people stupid?”
“You’d have to ask them.” Ernie chewed on the same finger that did the digging. I gagged mentally.
“No, I mean why do you think they’re stupid?”
“I just fuckin’ told you, doc. They watch too much TV!”
“Have you ever thought about how they got to be stupid?”
“Am I...” Ernie paused and looked around the circle for help, but found very few eyes were even looking at him let alone offering advice. “Am I speakin’ a different fuckin’ language, here? I’ve said it like, three times now. Try to keep up, Doc.”
“Keep up, Doc!” An exaggerated laugh from a prehistoric looking woman sitting next to Ernie. She was all teeth, no gums. An eye brow bisected her face separating her long forehead from her large shin. Long, bony legs peaked out from under a sundress.
“Alright,” The shrink gave a nod and crossed one leg over the other. “Take it this way.” The shrink tilted his head back. We sat for an uncomfortably long time in a silence broken only by the errant cough and a loud tick. “I don’t believe that we’re born stupid.”
“Yeah!” Ernie pointed at him, nodding his head in agreement. “Ignorance is learned.”
“Exactly. So, who teaches them?”
“It’s the goddamn parents. When I was a kid, you had five or six different moms on your block kicking your ass up the street every time you fucked up. Now, get this, my grandson kicked my son-in-law’s ass, and had the balls to call the police on his dad! Can you believe that shit? My mother would’ve put my ass in an oven if I did some shit like that.”
“You ever pick up anything from your parents, Ernie?”
“I see where you’re going with this. Yeah, I got a little bit of an anger problem.” His face turned up into a sad smirk. “Probably got that from my dad.”
“So, we can’t really blame them for being stupid, can we?”
“Yeah you can! No one has the right to be ignorant. That’s what my dad always said.”
“Is that why you broke Sam’s finger?”
“First off,” Ernie said. “I didn’t mean to break his finger. Second, he told me that the Phillies sucked. We won the pennant seven times!” Ernie was up out of his chair, coming at me again like he was going to break my other pinkie.
“I didn’t ask for this.” I said, turning my wheel chair around.
“Wait, Sam. Just wait a moment.” The shrink pointed to Ernie’s seat, but he stood there, defiant. His face was flushed and sweating. “Ernie, what the hell? We’ve talked about this. You can’t go around hurting people that don’t agree with you.”
“Seven Pennants!”
“So fucking what? You’re like the child that none of the other kids wanna play with. Picking on a guy in a wheelchair. Real tough guy shit. Sit the hell down!”
The cave-woman elicited a pointed and short laugh which drew angry eyes from Ernie.
I never noticed it until then, but the doctor was about the size of an orderly. His shoulders were the size of footballs, and he didn’t dress like any doctor I had ever seen. A t-shirt, black, with some white words written on it.
Monday is just another day.
And then he said something that I… Well, I don’t know how to explain it. It just sort of hung around in my head the rest of the day.
He said: “Do you like being a slave, Ernie?”
Ernie sucked some air between his teeth. His jaw was clenching and grinding. Surprisingly, he sat down without another word, and I turned my chair around. The shrink turned to me, uncrossed his legs and wrote something on his legal pad.
“How do you feel, Sam?”
My eyes got wide, and I turned to observe the room to see if I was the only person surprised. “Me?” I pointed at myself, a little dumbfounded.
“Your name is Sam, right? Are there any other Sam’s in here?” The Shrink looked around the room.
“I feel like my finger’s broke!”
“How does that make you feel?”
“Like some retard broke my finger!” I could see I was getting under Ernie’s skin. “I can’t even shuffle a deck of cards, which is about the only thing to do in here. Why is there no TV?”
“Rot’s your brain,” The Shrink said.
“I don’t want to be here. You people made me come here, and now I have a broken finger on top of everything else. So if you think I’m in the mood to...” I scrunched up my face. “Talk about my feelings then you’re wrong. I don’t belong here. I’m just visiting. You people belong here.” I pointed at Ernie. “You need to live here.” I think I hurt the cave-woman’s feelings. She wasn’t smiling anymore and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
“Okay,” The shrink said.
“Okay, what? Like you think it’s okay to be attacked by someone when all you want is to be left alone?”
“Calm down.” The Shrink motioned to someone behind me, and before I could finish I was being wheeled away from the group and taken to my room, where the orderly left me sitting at an angle pointing far enough away from my bed that I would have to use the hand with the broken finger to steer me towards it.
Well played…
I spent the rest of the day in my room, staring up at the wall, thinking about how I hurt that woman’s feelings. I couldn’t get her face out of my head. Not because she looked like a Frida Kahlo painting, but because… I don’t know. It was the first time I had seen her not smiling, and it was because of something I said.
