A Field Lecture in Therapeutic Foolishness
It was a Tuesday of the more sodden variety when we were summoned, somewhat ominously, to the east wing of Dr. Glossop’s rambling manor. The good doctor—Pop Glossop to us—had titled today’s session “An Exploratory on Silliness and the Subconscious,” which gave Sarah hope, Sid joy, and the rest of us digestive unease.
Glossop, who bore the air of a walrus with a PhD and an overdue tax return, stood before us like a prophet with an agenda.
“My dear young persons,” he boomed, “today we are not here to dwell on trauma or Jungian archetypes. No—we are here to liberate the Dork Within.”
Chits (Chitra Subramanian) leaned toward me. “Is that a metaphor, or is he actually going to pull something out of someone?”
Chats (Charulatha Doraiswami), always the more composed of the pair, murmured, “Either way, I’m not signing anything.”
Glossop paced the Persian rug like a man waiting for divine inspiration or a sandwich.
“You see,” he continued, “society stamps out silliness from the moment we can toddle. We are told to be proper, polished, pleasant. But what of the glorious absurdities within? The urge to gallop like a pony in formalwear? The need to hum to one’s toast? That, my dear friends, is the Dork Within. And it is dying to kazoo.”
Sid, who once tried shadow work via sock puppets, perked up. “Are kazoos mandatory?”
“Essential,” said Glossop gravely. “As is hypnodrama. Under trance, the ego loosens its grip, and up floats the self that once wore underpants on its head and recited Hamlet to houseplants.”
“Sounds like my Aunt Gertie on Boxing Day,” Chits muttered.
“Then your Aunt Gertie,” said Glossop, “is a pioneer.”
He whipped out a case study, detailing a client who became a jellyfish mid-session, wept with joy, and promptly founded a therapeutic clown collective. “Laughed for twenty-seven minutes straight. Fully healed. Opened a mime bakery.”
At this, Sarah, who possesses the quiet serenity of a Buddhist librarian, mused, “We repress joy for fear of looking foolish. But foolishness is often the most honest thing we have.”
Chats nodded. “Until it involves finger puppets. Then it’s a lawsuit.”
Glossop clapped once, causing Sid to drop his kazoo. “Excellent. Now for the field component of today’s lesson. Into the Glossopmobile!”
Thus began what became known in certain medical circles (well, Sid’s) as The Great Kazoo Pilgrimage.
We were whisked to the countryside in a wheezing estate wagon packed with folding chairs, thermoses of ginger cordial, and something Glossop called “the Emergency Bag of Spontaneity.” This included sock puppets, glitter, and a troubling number of rubber noses.
The site: an abandoned cricket pitch, now half-stone-circle, half-wildflower rave venue.
Glossop leapt from the car like a man possessed. “Here, under open sky, we embrace absurdity. We reject perfection. We kazoo!”
He distributed the instruments with priestly reverence.
“First, Kazoo Breathing,” he instructed. “Inhale dignity. Exhale nonsense. Good. Now… we hum.”
And hum we did. Twelve otherwise reputable humans, honking and wheezing in what Glossop declared “the key of unshackled whimsy.” A passing sheep observed us with concern.
Sid led the melody, sounding like a bassoon in distress. Chits and Chats harmonized, albeit reluctantly. Sarah kazooed in slow, breathy sighs, like a Victorian ghost with bronchitis.
Glossop raised his arms. “Now, march! Into the Glade of Improvised Therapy!”
We paraded through underbrush, into a clearing festooned with bunting and what might once have been a maypole. There, a sign read:
LIVE HYPNODRAMA KAZOO CHOIR: FIND YOUR INNER IDIOT. FREE BISCUITS.
Glossop positioned us like an orchestra of honking geese.
“Sid, you’re lead kazoo. Chits, harmony. Chats, syncopated staccato. Sarah, interpretive kazoo breathing. You—” he pointed to me, “—will narrate this madness as if for a BBC wildlife documentary.”
And so I did.
“Here, in the wilderness, the rare and twitchy Inner Dork emerges. Note the glitter dispersal. Observe the sock puppet ritual. Witness the alpha kazoo establish dominance…”
Glossop wept. Quietly. Beautifully.
After our final honk, we collapsed on tartan blankets while Glossop poured cordial with the air of a priest after successful exorcism.
“Therapy,” he said softly, “is not just about digging into pain. It is about recovering joy. The joy you buried under sarcasm and LinkedIn. The dork who once wore underpants as a cape and laughed till milk came out of their nose. That dork is your soul’s court jester. Let it perform.”
Chits sipped her cordial and blinked glitter from her lashes. “It was rather freeing.”
Chats checked her notebook. “Technically unethical, wildly effective.”
Sarah, eyes skyward, said, “I believe I kazooed my way through three past lives.”
And I, gentle reader, simply sighed, and honked a final honk. Because in that moment, absurd and sticky with sandwich crumbs, we were something rare:
Utterly ridiculous.
And absolutely whole.
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