Page 39 of Johnny

was. Some chick in a boring tan suit telling me about her amazing breakthrough therapy for relieving

the stress of traumatic events—

Oh, shit.

That’s why she was advertising in the hotel. There was some kind of veterans thing going on in the

convention center.

Hell. I guess she’s not as dumb as I thought. But actually… that’s kinda fucked up.

Anyway. I made an appointment and stopped off at her office on my way to the airport. And now

that I think back on it, she did kinda treat me like a shellshocked vet.

I probably qualify. Not sure anything I’ve done or seen would be called a service to my country.

But it doesn’t matter. I walked in, did the whole handshake thing. Sat down in a chair, and said…

nothing.

Not a damn thing beyond, “Hello.”

She did all the talking. At first it was awkward and I was pretty sure she was gonna ask me to

leave, but she didn’t. She just started explaining how our brains process unusual events. And how it

sticks with us because it’s all so extraordinary.

She talked about how a brain is like a database. And there’s folders inside the database. You got

one called home. And work. And fun. And sex. And food. Vacations, cars, clothes. Basically you have

a folder for everything, right? And when shit happens your brain files it away in the appropriate

folder to keep things up there all neat and tidy.

But when extraordinary shit happens you don’t know where to put it. So you either have to leave it

there floating around outside all the other, neatly organized folders, or you have to make a new folder

and put that shit in its place.

Some people can’t make a new folder. They either don’t know how to do it or they become afraid of a new folder. Because if something has a new folder it suggests that eventually that folder will

have more than one thing in it.

They can’t deal with that either. So they don’t make a folder, they don’t put the memory of that

experience in its proper place, and it just hangs out. Fucking up the whole, otherwise organized, filing

system.

It makes sense.

I think about her analogy a lot. I’m pretty good at making folders. My shit is not floating around

fucking up my system. It’s all neatly tucked away in its proper place.