Imaginary Ailments

Robin fell off some playground equipment at school. Hit his head. Lay there limply while a crowd gathered. When the redoubtable Mrs. Burns marched over from the school office to prod him with her toe, his eyelashes fluttered weakly.

“Did you black out?” she demanded.

“I—I think so,” he told her in a weak voice.

Of course Robin had done no such thing and I knew that the moment I intercepted her phone call – I was on the other line, talking to ______ who had called to inform me that he had gone on Prozac. “I’ll be right over,” I told Mrs. Burns.

Switched back to ______. “So. Prozac. Is it helping?”

“I think so. At least now I can formulate words in the right order. Subject. Verb. Object.”

“Pretty soon you’ll evolve to complex sentences,” I said heartily. “Well, that’s a good thing. I’m glad you’re feeling better. Listen, ______, Robin is having a crisis at school and I have to go –“

I’ve progressed a long way in my thinking about antidepressants to the point where I will now concede that they are useful in treating short term crisis situations but it still gives me the willies when close friends go on them. I can’t help thinking that well-being in capsule form is the ultimate American hubris. I could have told ______: your lifestyle is unhealthy. Utter self-involvement. Binge dieting. That unspeakably filthy apartment. Isolation punctuated only by background television noises, kamakazi telephone calls and online forums.

But I didn’t.

Instead I went over to ISM. Robin was loitering in the office, a bag of blue ice in his hand.

When he saw me, he tried to look pathetic.

I led him to a quiet corner for debriefing.

“Now, I need you to tell me the truth, Robin. Max was complaining that he got hit in the head so hard while he was playing football last week that he saw stars. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Did you think that was cool?”

“Yes.”

“But, you know, here’s the thing. If you really got knocked out cold on the playground, I have to take you to the emergency room so they can take x-rays of your head. So that starts a really big process. A lot of work for everybody. And if it’s work that they really don’t need to do –“

At that moment Mrs. Burns marched into view. “You're here. That was quick,” she boomed. “So, Robin, your head hurts still.”

He darted a quick look at me. “Yes-s-s-s-s.”

“There’s no bump and no bleeding,” I said. “Where does it hurt?”

“Here?” He patted the middle of his scalp.

“That would be consistent with a contralateral injury,” I allowed. “Robin, you’re coming home with me.”

I wasn’t going to pull his cover openly but under my prodding, the true story emerged. He had an audience: he played to it. This will be the story of Robin’s life. He’s dramatic. He’s charismatic. He has a vivid imagination. It must be genetic. I think about what little I know about the most feckless of the DiLucchio boys, the one I didn’t meet when I steamrolled into Bakersfield last week for a little meet and greet at the dying, dysfunctional patriarch’s bedside. Dale DiLucchio. Hustler extrordinaire. He probably started out lying in playgrounds.

“Robin,” I said. “It’s okay to have an imagination. In fact, it’s great to have an imagination. But, you know, it’s like having a superpower. Or a black belt in karate. There’s times when it’s okay to use it – like when you’re writing your vampire novel –“

“Oh, I stopped writing that,” said Robin. “Now I’m writing one about an African-American kid who lives in this old broken-down house except every night it changes into a beautiful mansion. And there’s this old crazy lady who lives in the house except that what’s really happening is that he’s going into her dreams –“

“That’s great, Robin,” I said, slightly peeved that my Mother Knows Best moment was being highjacked. “But what it’s very important for you to understand is that there’s a time for imagination and there’s a time for information. And that many times those two things aren’t the same. If you use your imagination when you’re supposed to be giving information, then you’re lying.”

Hey, the rap worked on me when I read it in A Tree Grows In Brooklyn about a million years ago. And that truly is one of the suckier thing about being badly parented: you have nothing to fall back on in parenting your own offspring and so are forced, magpie-like, to go for the bright, shiny platitudes in the culture around you.