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The Possibility

Page history last edited by Russell 14 years, 9 months ago

Every time the psychiatrist said "um-hm" he felt weakened.  His reality was breaking down around him; the walls falling in on him in massive pieces, but the little man in a laughably stereotypical herringbone suit jacket with suede elbow patches just remarked "um-hm," and wrote on in his little notebook. Out there, beyond the comfortable couch and strategically placed box of tissues, lay the discovery of a lifetime, and yet this little man, this Freudian joke, seemed to indicate with every nod and note in his notebook that the path to this discovery was littered with obsession and compulsion and the mere inability to understand how "large" he was.  Dirk Isaway knew better than to let his "handicap" keep him from the truth of his destiny.  Yes, he did think he was much bigger than he was due to some strange form of neurological illness, but this was a small deficit.  One to be overcome easily.  Perhaps it would prove an advantage!  How can this clown be thought to be in the same category as me--as scientist, he thought.  I am a scientist!  This man is a quack.  But then he had to back away from such defensive thinking.  It was this man, after all, who had helped him to realize that he was, in fact, smaller than he believed.

 

The pain of it, the assuredness of being very large, was harsh and made for an awkward life.  There was the constant ducking through doorways, the discomfort of any furniture at all--Dirk had always preferred to stand, sure as he was that no chair, or maybe even room, could fit his enormous body--that brought him back to Dr. Nichtklein.  And sure enough, the doctor had helped him to realize his delusion. This was all the better since it meant that ancient egyptian and celtic and greek tombs were not as tight a fit as he'd once thought.  Still though, now that he'd realized the nature of the affliction, it seemed pointless to go on and on about emotions and feelings.  He knew he was smaller than he thought, why discuss all the intricacies of how that made him some sort of different person?

 

Before he knew it, the hour was up and it was time to vacate the "room of emotional confrontation" and move on with the rest of his existence--what of it there was left.  A strange thing happened on his way out to the lobby and the elevator.  An old man, strangely familiar, confronted him and spoke the magic words: Hapax Legomenon.  Specifically, the old man said, "I have seen it, I know what it is!--the Hapax Legomenon."

 

"Which one?"

 

"The English one.  You don't know now, but English will die out.  There will be a Hapax Legomenon!" 

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