If I were smarter I would have come up with this first, but a Swedish taxi company beat me to it: psychotherapy taxis.
You read that right. Shrinks in a cab.
Stockholm — as you may already know — is filled with Swedish people. These Swedish people are quiet, introverted and slow to form meaningful relationships. Because of this, a lot of them are nuts.
Well, not nuts, necessarily, but definitely lonely and in need of social interaction. In short, they need somebody to talk to.
That’s where the psychotherapy cabs come in. For about $165, a therapist-equipped taxi will pick you up and drive you around for an hour while you spill your guts to a real, licensed psychologist.
While there’s no guarantee you’ll get over your bed wetting problem or the guilt you still feel for making your mother cry that one time back in 1982, the mobile sessions have proven helpful for others.
Back in college, I drove a (non-therapeutic) cab for a couple summers. It’s mostly a lousy job; the pay stinks, the hours are long, you get no respect from customers or management and if you pick someone up from a bar on a Saturday night, there’s at least a 50 percent chance they will do something terrible to your backseat upholstery, something you’ll be expected to clean up before turning in your cab at the end of your shift.
The only good thing about the job is you get to meet a lot of people, folks from every stratum of society. You pick up wealthy ladies out at the airport. You transport “working girls” home after all their “customers” have slunk home to wives and kiddies. You move van-loads of railway workers back to their homes in Illinois or Indiana.
And to pass the time, you chat. About kids, husbands, wives, parents … basically, you’re talking relationships. I did this for 12 hours a day for two whole summers and not once did it occur to me to charge therapist money for the service.
The last fare I ever picked up — before I retired from the business forever — held a .44 to the back of my head and relieved me of the money I had in my cash box. Like most cabbies, I stashed most of my evening’s take in my sock, so I was only out sixty bucks. But still…
If I had been a psychotherapist cabbie, it could have gone differently:
“Hey man,” says the stinky guy on the other end of the handgun. “Gimme all your money.”
“Now son,” I calmly say (were I a shrink). “I think we need to work on your anger issues.”
“Gimme your money, dude! I ain’t kiddin’.”
“A lot of times,” I suggest, “these issues can be traced back to the mother.”
“My … my mother?” he says. “She … she was a saint! But I made her cry back in 1982. I … I …”
“I know, I know,” I say. “What do you say we talk about it?”
In tears, the robber pockets his Smith & Wesson and we begin our journey to emotional health.
Meanwhile, I get to keep my sixty bucks.
The Swedes are onto something, I think.
Catch Mike Taylor’s Reality Check radio program every weekday at 5:30 p.m. on WGLM, m106.3 on your FM dial.
mtaylor@staffordgroup.com
(616) 548-8273
No comments:
Post a Comment