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By David Laing Dawson
Watching
American idol last winter - all right, I admit it. We were hooked.
My wife and I had to see how well each contestant rose to the
challenge, and who would be thrown off the island. We watched so
attentively that we could soon predict the comments of Randy, Paula,
and Simon: "Dawg. Listen up. Y'know, it was just all right for
me." And "You're a beautiful person. You are who you are.
You're authentic. "And "If I'm to be honest...".
That
particular comment ("to be honest" or "to be perfectly honest")
is always a problem for me, as it appears to imply that all one said
before was less than honest, or that 'to be honest' is something
of an anomaly requiring explanation or excuse. But I digress.
Watching
American idol last winter we were told over and over again that one
should never give up his or her dream. Everybody should go for it, we
were told. You can be whatever you want to be. Mind you, the dreams
to which they referred were limited to fabulous success in the music
and entertainment business. And by the size of the line-up for the
first round of try-outs it would appear the majority of the
demographic between 16 and 30 do aspire to the platinum record.
Fortunately, many won’t make it, and will have to settle for
building or repairing things, doctoring, nursing, plumbing, and
raising families. But I digress again.
The
point was "the dream", pursuing one's dream against all odds,
no matter how unrealistic. It reminded me of a man named Archie
Papalian.
Archie
had an appointment to see me at the outpatient clinic following his
admission to a psychiatric ward in the hospital across town. Archie
arrived a little early, or I was a little late. More likely the
latter. I had not met him before. The receptionist came down the hall
to my office to tell me that perhaps I should not delay seeing him as
he was behaving rather oddly in the waiting area.
I
walked back with her to her booth looking out on a room of chairs and
half a dozen patients, patiently waiting. In the centre of the room a
small man, dressed well, briefcase in one hand, was dancing, or at
least gyrating. While his feet remained planted firmly on the carpet,
his hips swivelled in and out, forward and back, a slow motion
version of that provocative pelvic thrust rock stars often use to the
delight of their hormone addled fans.
This
was Archie. I recognized his dance. We have a very unromantic name
for it: truncal akathisia. We also have a pill for it, which I
fetched from the medication nurse and gave to Archie with a glass of
water. Obediently he swallowed and his gyrations settled down after
twenty minutes or so.
Archie
had opened a restaurant a few years before. It was going to be the
biggest and the best in town. It quickly came to grief as his
grandiosity, his dream, vastly outpaced his resources. The restaurant
closed. His creditors pursued him. The government pursued him for
both taxes and infractions and then for failing to respond to them.
When Archie proved incapable of dealing with this, his son and his
family doctor had him admitted to the hospital, where he was wrongly
diagnosed as having schizophrenia and then given the medication that
caused his pelvic gyrations.
In
my office Archie was clearly manic, not schizophrenic. He spoke
rapidly, convincingly, ebulliently, grandiosely. He dumped the
contents of his briefcase on my desk. Within a week or so, taking
lithium (the enemy of outsized dreams), and abstaining from the
neuroleptic medication that had caused his belly dance, he became a
reasonable, calm and pleasant, if somewhat defeated man.
But
it was the contents of his briefcase that caught my attention. For
here were documents that proclaimed, for the world to see, on
government letterhead, the office of the Crown Attorney, signed by
court officials, embossed with a coat of arms, sealed and notarised,
that the matter before the bench was that of Regina
and the Government of Canada vs. Archie Papalian, King of Kings.
Regina refers to the Queen, of
course, our head of state. Elizabeth would be her name, as in,
officially, Elizabeth the
Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom, Canada and Her
other Realms and Territories, Queen, Head of the Commonwealth,
Defender of the Faith.
Going up against,
in this corner, weighing in at one hundred and fifty pounds, Archie
Papalian, King of Kings.
So Archie had pursued his dream, and
the Government of Canada, though feeling he should give them a little
more money and treat them with a little more respect, officially
acknowledged that he had achieved greatness, and would forevermore be
known, in their archives, for later historians to ponder, as King of
Kings.
What a wonderful world.
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