The Shrink

“God, I want a cigarette,” Karen uttered, two fingers up to her mouth.

“Do you believe that’s adding to your recent anxiety, your efforts to quit smoking?”

“Could be I suppose,” she said. “Doc, I’m bored. Tell me something about Dr. Saitama.”

Dr. Saitama blinked behind her sleek, thick rimmed glasses. “You would like to hear about me? Are you sure? The time we would spend would still be on your bill. And I don’t even know where to start about myself.”

“Naw I got cash to burn. And I dunno, tell the people watching at home why the hell you wanted to become a shrink or something like that.” Karen took out an invisible microphone and pointed it towards Dr. Saitama.

Again, Dr. Saitama blinked. She reflected for a moment. “Well, as a child, I loved hearing about people’s problems. I’d talk with them on the playground, at the lunch table, in class, everywhere really.”

“I see I see!” Karen exclaimed with a Freudian accent, “we have a saint on our hands!”

“Not a saint, just a person who likes to make a difference in people’s lives. Have you ever had that urge? That urge to make a difference?”

“I get it every night as I brush my teeth.” Karen snatched a note book off the table and started to doodle a rough sketch of the Wheel of Fortune set. “And this urge, this force of nature if you will, did it augment and grow as the years went by?”

“Yes, for high school is a very rough time for most adolescents, and I was always there to help”

“mhmm,” she hummed as she wrote Things your shrink says under the category. “Any specific instances in which you really turned around someone’s life? The hopeless druggie? The steroid ravaged jocks? Anorexic prom queens?”

“Not to toot my own horn—”

“Oh heavens forbid!”

“But I think I might have might have improved a… few lives.”

“Ladies and gentlemen! She’s modest too!” On the note book she started to feign guesses for the word puzzle. Let’s see here… how about a B! One B for 300!

Dr. Saitama smiled to herself, “I remember Lauren Tinlin; I was the first person to talk to her after the end of her two year relationship. I was there before anyone!”

I’ll guess: an L… two L’s for 200 each!

Slowly becoming immersed in the memories, Dr. Saitama leaned back in her chair. “I got that shy boy in gym class to get beyond his fears and ask his future wife out.”

An I? Yes one I!

“I brought people together, you know? I made differences! And I loved the rush…”

One S!

“It made me feel so good about myself! I felt so empowered!”

One H!

“And that’s when I knew,”

One T!

“that psychiatry was simply,”

And a U!

“the job for me.”

Karen looked up and smiled. “That’s touching Doc.”

“Thank you, I believe we have 5 minutes left.”

“Let’s call it a day, my friend.”

“If that’s fine with you.”

“Yes’m, fine with me! Nice talkin’”

Latter that night, when Dr. Saitama came home from work, her teenage boy of 16 approached her:

“Can I talk to you about something that happened at school today? It’s really upsetting me…”

“Mommy’s has had a long day sweetie, we’ll talk about it later.”

“But Mom—“

“Later.”

“OK.”

Author's note: this is not written as a statement on all psychiatrists, just a specific few.