Lost in a Daydream – Part 2
Author © Scott D. Zachary
I woke up more rested than I had been for many months. I was still somewhat groggy, perhaps due to that pill that knocked me out cold for ten hours. One more long night of deep sleep the following night along with three scrumptious meals each day at the Arkansas State Hospital cafeteria, and I was back on top of the world!
But it was a different world. I’m not talking about the State Hospital; I’m referring to my perception of the world and the way I interacted with the people in it. I became utterly selfless. That was a monumental change in the Scott that I know, the one who was always all about himself with little regard for anyone else unless of course, it benefited me to consider someone else. What’s more, I became so selfless that I wasn’t even aware of this dramatic change in my personality. Other people were suddenly important to me—no matter who they were. Everyone with whom I came into contact mattered. I mattered to myself, too, but not as much.
Humbled? You bet!
Time for a well-deserved sabbatical! Just in the four months of this year leading up to my calamitous camping trip, I worked more hours than most people work in a year—up to 140 productive hours a week—aspiring to build my little software business to the point where it could operate without my leviathan efforts keeping it afloat. Yes, and I had a blast doing it, but I took it a bit too far. I planned to relax and enjoy this hard-earned break. As it turns out, Aunt Marvelene couldn’t have chosen a more ideal place for it.
I phoned my office on the third day and handed the reins of my company over to my employees so Eloquent Systems wouldn’t go belly up during my absence. In the process, I gave Mark a list of supplies that I needed: my cut-off jeans, muscle shirts, sandals, and suntan lotion. Yes, suntan lotion so I could sunbathe on one of the picnic tables during our smoke breaks. I also asked him to bring my Walkman, my waist pouch full of sixties and seventies rock-and-roll cassette tapes, and of course, a quart of bubble bath. I had obtained permission from the head nurse to use the bathtub in the admitting room, which was a deep old-fashioned pedestal tub. She said it would be fine as long as they didn’t have anyone scheduled to arrive. I told Mark to expedite delivery of my order.
On the fourth day during a morning smoke break, I met a sweet black-haired young lady with a musical quality to her laugh. She sprouted a virtual flower garden of warm fuzzies throughout my being. Her pronunciation of “Pollisha” delightfully titillated the realm of my sacroiliac. I could see a similar reaction in her toward me. Wow! Pollisha, a comely beauty in her late twenties, evoked a penetrating desire in me; although, her child-like vulnerability coaxed a protective paternal emotion from me. Thereon, a warmly delicious feeling landscaped my mindset.
I introduced myself that day to the head cook in the cafeteria while she dished up my lunch. Sharon, a sweet, motherly black lady, reacted joyfully to my abundant praise for her fantastic home-style cooking. Sharon’s “vittles” matched Aunt Marvelene’s generous spreads of delectableness, and that’s as good as food gets. I raved to Sharon about her collard greens. She loaded them with bacon, garlic, diced sweet scallions, young potatoes, and wine vinegar, just like Aunt Marvelene’s. Sharon lit up! My lavish praise for Sharon’s cooking won her southern heart along with Sharon’s assurance that she would serve me collard greens every night for dinner.
As the fisherman in remotest Canada used to say in the old Michelob commercial when a gaggle of skimpily dressed Swedish dancing girls came giggling out of the woods, “It’s gettin’ better!”
Mark showed up after lunch, carrying two backpacks filled with all my goodies. The head nurse inspected the contents and looked at me querulously. “This looks like you’re planning to take a vacation here, young man.”
“Yes, ma’am, is the bathtub available for a bubble bath?”
Chuckling uncertainly, “I suppose so.”
I strolled into the admitting room and adjusted the temperature of the water to a soothing hot that I could barely tolerate, poured a third of the bottle of bubble bath into the churning water, stripped down, and slid into the luxurious turbulence. The bubbles generously oozed over the circumference of the tub while I cheerfully sang in an unusually harmonious manner...
What a day for a daydream
What a day for a daydreamin’ boy
And I’m lost in a daydream
Dreamin’ ‘bout my bundle of joy
And even if time ain’t really on my side
It’s one of those days for takin’ a walk outside
I’m blowin’ the day to take a walk in the sun
And fall on my face on somebody’s new-mown lawn
I’ve been havin’ a sweet dream
I been dreamin’ since I woke up today
It’s starrin’ me and my sweet thing
‘Cause she’s the one that makes me feel this way
What a day for a daydream
What a day for a daydreamin’ boy
And I’m lost in a daydream
Dreamin’ ‘bout my bundle of joy
I would love to have seen the nurses’ expressions outside the admitting room when they heard my joyous rendition of The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Daydream.” Nearly all of their patients are grievously depressed, and the rest are bitterly angry about being institutionalized. Not me—I was beginning to have the time of my life!
An orderly opened the door and poked his head in as I began to spray the mountains of bubbles, which had volumed from the tub, into the floor drain. He stared at my atypical activity for several seconds before apparently deciding that it fell short of lunacy. He rolled his eyes. “Mr. Zachary, we have a patient scheduled to arrive in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll have these pesky bubbles under control shortly.”
Shaking his head, he closed the door.
A few of the ladies in the women’s wing heard about my bubble bath and expressed their genuine interest. I gave them the rest of my bubble bath solution and called Mark, requesting an emergency order, this time two gallons of bubble making liquid. As time went on, it became necessary for me to schedule the bathtub for my bubble baths. Considering the enthusiasm this generated among the women, I’d be genuinely surprised if bubble baths were not part of the routine patient therapy now at the Arkansas State Hospital.
Upon returning to my room, I talked with my roommate Steve. He was a gloomy man in his mid-twenties and had a yellow band on his wrist. I sat down on my bed, facing him where he cocooned himself under the covers in his bed. “I see you have a yellow band,” I said. “Everyone else has either a red band like mine or a blue one after at least four days of being good. What’s the yellow band mean?”
“It means I’m on criminal watch.”
“Why?”
“I ran from the cops in my car.” He sobbed, “I miss my wife.”
“It’ll get better, Steve. Before you know it, you’ll be out of here and spending time with your lovely lady.”
“I don’t think so. If they let me out, it’ll be to go to jail.”
“Set your goals and work toward them.”
“I don’t know if I can stay focused that long, Scott.”
“Sure, you can, Steve!” I could tell that he was deeply depressed. I don’t know what got into me, but he looked as though he could use some entertainment. “Want to see something really neat?” I stood and walked around to the foot of my bed.
“What are you going to do?”
“Watch this.” I flattened my back against the wall to give me room to build up as much speed as possible. Imitating a springboard diver, I bounced off the balls of my feet twice and then leaped into the air as high as I could to clear the foot of the steel bed frame. At the top of my arc, I swung my hands behind my back, straightened my body like a board, extended my chin up, and did a perfect belly-smacker on my bed, bouncing vertically. I barely missed busting my shins on the steel footboard and even more narrowly missed cracking my skull on the steel headboard.
“You are crazy!”
I rolled onto my side, facing Steve and propped my head on my palm, grinning. “Nah, I just think I am. It’s all a matter of perspective, Steve. Everything is.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
You know those times when it’s a tad too late to say something that you wish you would’ve said in a situation? I didn’t have any of those during my stay at the Arkansas State Hospital. Not one. Everything fell into place as though I performed flawlessly in a finely scripted play.
Charm? I brimmed with it.
Charisma? The Pied Piper and his music-loving rodents would’ve happily followed me to my La-La Land and.
I wish I could be the person I was then. I’m now a lot more like that than I was prior to crashing and burning, but nowadays I’ve lapsed back into being predominantly self-centered. Not then, though; I zoned in on other people.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
It’s now day five at the hospital. I’m sitting at the end of a long conference table on-deck to be interviewed. The psychiatrist, a stately gray-haired man presenting a thoughtful analytic expression, is seated to my left. Beyond him is one of the nurses who oversee the patients, a pleasant smile on her caring face. To my right is a business-like red-head, her pen poised to take notes on a blank sheet of paper nested in a manila folder. Beyond her is Nurse Hagar who had been obnoxiously condescending and had shown me no reason why she could justify being condescending. Her horrid mastery of the English language and her wicked sideways glances at the other patients and me over the previous days demonstrated her complete disdain for having to pretend she cared about anybody besides herself.
“I’m Doctor Anton, your psychiatrist. Are you Scott Zachary?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The lady to your right is your caseworker, Andrea Patterson. To my left is Nurse Mason and across from her is Nurse Hagar.”
I stood and shook each of their hands. Their expressions signaled that no one had ever done that in one of these sessions.
“Scott, do you know why you’re here in the Arkansas State Hospital?” asked Dr. Anton.
“I’m here because God used me as a conduit in the genesis of his newest universe.” I articulated these words with a stone-cold humorless face. I have no idea how I managed it as I looked around at my incredulous audience. Their slack-jawed expressions told me that my statement was a first in their annals.
Several seconds elapsed before Dr. Anton broke the frozen silence. “That puts a fresh spin on grandiosity. Are you serious, Scott?”
“Of course, I’m not,” I chuckled. “I’m here because I need a vacation. I’ve been working far too many hours for far too many months. I’ve worked an average of twenty hours a day, seven days a week, for over a year without taking even one day off.”
“So you’re saying that introduced your psychotic episode?” asked the doctor.
“You could say that, couldn’t you?”
“No, are you saying that? I asked you first.”
“Of course, that’s what I said. Who’s on third—not on first.”
“Alright, you’re having fun now. I can see that.”
I smiled as I watched Nurse Hagar baton-twirl her pencil between her fingers starting between her thumb and forefinger, ending between her ring and little finger, and back again. Her impatience annoyed me to the hilt.
“Would you say that you are paranoid?” Dr. Anton asked.
I looked directly at Dr. Anton while guttering my soliloquy toward Nurse Hagar. “Aunt Marvelene would scold me if I spoke to her in this manner, but we’re all well-educated boys and girls here.” Shrugging my shoulders aloofly, “As we all know, paranoia tends not to be associated with hallucinations and often takes the form of compensatory megalomania.” I noted in my periphery that Nurse Hagar ceased twirling her pencil and glared in my direction as I proceeded. “Of course, my extemporaneous duplicity insinuated grandiosity; nonetheless, each of you readily discerned the antithesis as clearly as you understand my words.” I glanced at the pencil clamped under Nurse Hagar’s middle finger as I continued. “However, I do perceive a temperate degree of collusion in my entrepreneurial endeavors, albeit, nothing anomalous.”
Dr. Anton nodded his tacit understanding.
Nurse Hagar slammed her knuckles on the table, the two halves of her snapped pencil flying in opposite directions as she humphed, stood abruptly, and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
I smiled broadly. “What got into her?”
Dr. Anton struggled to maintain a professional image as his diaphragm twitched mirthfully, his eyes sparkling.
“As I was saying, no, I’m not paranoid, sir.” I glanced at the door. “And I hate condescension.”
Dr. Anton glanced in the direction of the door and presented an endorsing smile. “That’s apparent. I think you are well aware of what’s going on around you, Scott. Do you have any desire to hurt yourself or anyone else?”
“No, I don’t, none whatsoever, Dr. Anton.” I glanced down at my case worker’s scribbled notes. I watched as she printed “Prankish and Witty!” at the bottom of the page.
Click here to read the conclusion of “Lost in a Daydream”
