Monday, September 19, 2005

"Did I just hallucinate that conversation?"

Okay, so if you have a chronic illness that affects your head and thinking you'll probably relate to this to some extent. If you don't have a chronic illness that affects your head and thinking...well...you might find this completely weird and at least mildly entertaining.

So on Saturday I went to Providence to spend the afternoon visiting with two Lyme friends from the last Lyme Out Retreat, Barb and Jack. They're great people and it's amazing how comfortable we are around each other (or at least how comfortable I feel around them) after only spending a long weekend together at the retreat. We talked a lot during the time I was there (about 5 hours), a lot about Lyme, which was really nice (there's something to be said about being able to discuss past Lyme doctors with someone who has been to a lot of the same ones!), and some about other stuff. We went out to lunch where I ate too much (which for me right now is an egg, a few homefries, and a piece of toast) and later went out to Pastiche, a pastry shop that has really good sweets - I got a lemon mousse cake, very light and delicious.

It was at Pastiche, over our coffee, tea, and pastries that we started having some weird conversations. Conversations that, if overheard would make very little sense and seem completely idiotic. But conversations that make you laugh uncontrollably if you're a part of them and realize how completely insane and stupid they are, but still necessary and potentially able to turn a bad day around.

I believe we were talking about doctors (as we had been talking about a lot throughout the day) and Jack asked how Dr. Bock spells his last name. He guessed "Bach" but I told him there's another Lyme doctor in Pennsylvania who spells it that way but my Dr. Bock spells it "Bock". Then we got off on a tangent about how Jack thinks it would be cool to have Bach as your last name and then use your initials instead of your first and middle names - as in J.S. Bach (the composer). Yeah, so far the conversation doesn't seem that weird but bear with me.

Then Jack wanted to figure out how many possible combinations of two initials there could be. So, we turned to Barb (who was a math major in college) to help us figure out the formula, I whipped out my cell phone (it has a calculator on it) to multiply it out and got the result - 676. Then we had to figure out what it would be to get rid of duplicates of the same initials (as in J.J. vs. J.J. - or J1. J2. vs. J2. J1.) and came out with 650, a nice round(ish) number.

When we had figured all this out we took a second to think about it and realized how completely silly the whole conversation had been. That's when Barb came out with one of the best phrases I've heard in a while, "Did I just hallucinate that conversation?" Maybe it doesn't seem that funny to someone reading this, but you have to understand that we were in the middle of a pastry shop (a sit-down pastry shop, but still a pastry shop) trying to figure out all the possible combinations of initials to go with the last name Bach! It seemed hilarious at the time. And the idea that it was so ridiculous that Barb thought it could have been hallucinated just made it all the more funny!

The rest of the day there visiting with them was great and there were a lot of laughs - and we all know that laughter is the best medicine! "[Humanity] has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand." --Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

If you've made it this far and still don't think it was funny, I'll leave you with a comic that you may find a little funnier.



Yours,
Penguini

1 Comments:

At September 25, 2005 5:53 PM, Blogger garbungled said...

hehehe "hallucinate that conversation" hehehe "fabric softener" -- I am having a case of Swiss Cheese Soup myself. I didn't know you had a blog on here, I read it bottom to top, good stuff, I'll try to keep up with it assuming my laptop can keep up with me. I am trying to remember if I have even talked to you recently enough for you to know about soup. I haven't been on much cuz of my laptop's "issues" (and that is putting it lightly -- not turning on it more than an "issue") You have your away message up right now or I would IM you. Talk to you soon.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home