“The Doctor Is In” — Inspired by Doctor Lucy
“Grandma, I need a piece of double-sided tape, please.”
“OK,” said her words, but her look said, “What are you up to now?”
She followed me into the living room, which I had transformed into an impromptu workshop. The day before, I had the unique pleasure of standing in the wings as our new refrigerator was delivered. Any child who has had a fridge delivered, knows the unmatched joy of having a huge cardboard box at her disposal. I proceeded to recreate Lucy’s Psychiatric Help stand from the Peanuts comic strip. It was a parody of a childhood lemonade stand, where Lucy dispensed therapeutic advice, all for the price of 5 cents. I needed a piece of double-sided tape to complete my construction project.
Grandma looked fretfully at the ominously large pair of scissors I had taken from the kitchen drawer as my determined little hands struggled to cut through the thick cardboard.
“I’m going to help people, Grandma, and give them advice to solve their problems.”
“Well, that’s a very good thing to do. Are you done with the scissors?”
Over the next few weeks I readily dispensed advice (that they didn’t even know they needed) to unsuspecting family members and friends from my makeshift therapy stand. My poodles Rascal and Smokey, along with my Grandma, made up the bulk of my patient clientele. Being made of only cardboard, the psychiatric advice stand deteriorated over time and was eventually abandoned to the recycle bin. But the dream and the inspiration remained.
As with all of us, life happened and things moved along quickly after that. As a high school graduate I won diverse partial scholarships, but without a full ride I decided I couldn’t afford to go full time to university. So I decided to go to work, taking classes part time instead.
Years passed, as did my grandma and my poodles, but I never forgot my dream. From time to time, Lucy popped up at just the right moment, giving sage advice that somehow seemed to be exactly what I needed at the time.
“Snap out of it! You’ve got to stop all this silly worrying!” she advised sternly. And I did just that.
“Go home and eat a jelly-bread sandwich folded over,” she once quipped, reminding me not to over-dramatize the situation and just curl up with some comfort food until the storm blew over.
And once, when I was feeling particularly unsure of myself, there she was, advising, “If you really want to impress people, you need to show them you’re a winner.”
Though she was usually speaking to Charlie Brown, it was just what I needed to hear.
As I worked menial job after job, I always managed to set aside enough time and money to take college classes at night. Over time, the credits added up until I received my first college diploma.
Life continued, and so did my goal of becoming a psychologist. As my regular jobs improved, so did the amount of effort and funds I could spend on my university classes. Before I knew it, another college degree had been completed.
And so it went, taking class after class, enjoying each one along the way to a fuller, formal education. I’d been working at various universities for years by now, loving every aspect of education. When my eighth and final degree was completed, I had realized my dream of becoming a psychologist. Now I could create a suite of offices, a real-life version of my childhood cardboard facsimile.
Finally, when I graduated with my PhD in Psychology, a good friend, one of the few who knew of my inspiration from the comic strip, gave me a framed picture of Lucy hard at work in her makeshift office. I hung it on the wall of my therapy room, where many of my patients saw it and commented how much they liked the iconic comic strip. But only Grandma and I knew the whole story. Lucy empowered me all those years ago. And after all, sometimes everyone just needs a jelly-bread sandwich folded over.
