The Front-Desk Oldster

There was a slip in my mailbox indicating that I had received a package. I went to the front desk in the lobby of my apartment building to pick it up.

There, I dealt with one of the building staff, a man about 75 years old.

I gave him the slip. He retrieved my package.

When I went up to my apartment, there was a UPS receipt stuck to my door showing that a package had been delivered for me today. (My building used to put those receipts in our mailboxes to save us a trip back down to the lobby, a much more tenant-friendly way to do things.)

Packages awaiting retrieval, obviously, are arranged by apartment unit—with the apartment number written and circled with a black marker—in a room next to the front desk. So, the Asshole of the Day could easily have given me both packages at once.

Overheard at the “Freudian Slip Coffee Shop”

Sean the Shrink: So, how goes your research study?

Sinead the Shrink: It’s been a long five years, but we’re pretty close to submitting it for peer review. We hope to present our findings to the annual convention in November and have it published in the journal in January.

Sean: How many patient profiles did you end up completing?

Sinead: With help from our colleagues in Canada and the UK, we have about five thousand.

Sean: So you proved your hypothesis after all?

Sinead: Without a doubt. The forward and back buttons that control a car’s sound system from the steering wheel are a reliable predictor of success or failure in a patient’s therapy experience.

Sean: Well, Sinead, as you know I was somewhat skeptical when you first told me about your ideas. But sure enough, I recently asked my kids to survey their fellow classmates in Advanced Placement about which button they pushed more often. Seventy-five percent are go-forwarders.

Sinead: That just about matches our results, Sean. The Forwards are future oriented, proactive, risk takers, change agents, open to new experiences, and explorers. The Backs live in the past, are passive, are arrested developmentally, and just can’t see beyond their present reality.

Sean: Maybe you ought to recommend that automakers remove the back button from their new models altogether. You know what we say, first the action and change in behavior, then the change in attitude.

Sinead: Yep, the mind will always follow the body.