I'm Just a Roadshow Cannibal

Life's hard when you're an obsessive-compulsive blogger and there's only fifteen minutes until "Antiques Roadshow."

It's like-- gosh, I really want to put some junk in the trunk and let it shake for tomorrow at 7:18am like I always do.

And then part of me is like, gorshie me, guys, whatever I put out there just isn't going to be worth the effort. It's going to be all stream-of-consciousness and drivelpoohs. Not only that, but my wife is sitting across from me making sock-cats, and she's asking me questions about the trajectory of their ears, and I, of course, am too polite to say, "Um, dear, I'm trying to formulate mindless drivelpoohs here," and now there's thirteen minutes until "Roadshow" and I'm not any closer to having any idea of what the hell I'm talking about than I was two minutes ago.

Or.... am I?

Wait-- no, I'm not.

There's a rumor going around the psych hospital where I work that I'm a cannibal who eats patients. It would be great if I could blame a patient for this profoundly untrue rumor, but it's entirely my fault. It all started on Sunday while I was working the 3pm-11pm shift (aren't you happy that, even though my life is turned upthefucksidedown that I've managed to keep my blogging schedule on the level for alls y'alls? Of course you are.) and a male patient was using the hall telephone to call two local news affiliates to report that there were cannibals on the staff who were eating the patients.

After this gentleman was moved onto the isolation ward for a "time out" (that's really what we call it) a female patient and I were sitting together while I monitored the unit.

"Do you believe he was calling up the news stations and tellin' them that the staff here eats people?"

This is a patient with whom I regularly joke.

"Well," I said, "you can never be too sure about these things."

She cocked her head slightly, rather like a dog. A dog with reading glasses and fluffy white slippers.

I raised my eyebrows up and down a couple of times, and, for good measure, licked my lips ever so slightly. Her eyes widened and she started cracking up.

"It's always the quiet ones," she said laughing.

Another patient who was walking by at the time stopped and stared at us.

"How many patients you eat in a day?" she asked.

"Well," I began seriously, "I couldn't possibly eat a whole patient in a day. I have one that I sort of... you know... snack on throughout the month."

"Don't that shit get rotten and nasty?" the second patient asked.

"Well, I admit that the flavor and mouth-feel... changes over time."

"Shit!" cried a third patient, an elderly black woman whom I thought was sleeping in her room, "mothafucka said 'mouth feel!' That shit's mothafucked up, sir!"

Today, certain patients looked at me differently, turning to keep an eye on me as I walked down the hallway behind them, my trusty clipboard (cutting-board?) in my hand.

"I'm eating doubles at breakfast," the patient I joke around with said with a devious smile, "gotta fatten me up for ya!" She is on prisoner status for trying to kill her mother.

And now you know how I became the psych hospital cannibal.

And, hey, look at that! Just in time for "Roadshow." I'll bet you didn't know that cannibals watched public television. Learn something new on this mothafucka every day, don't you, sir?