Reality TV in the WC

I tutored a pretty crazy session the other day—an older woman came in wanting help with her “moment that changed my life forever” paper. Before we got started she told me her paper was really long because once she got rolling with the writing she just couldn’t stop. Rather than one single incident, she figured she’d just throw in the life story. Her five page assignment had grown into a fifteen page narrative. No kidding.

As far as therapy sessions, this one was a whopper. Molested as a child, almost the victim of a smothering as a pre-teen, three husbands (in succession—no polyandry, although that probably would have fit right in), was cheated on, gave her children away, disowned by parents, lost the house, became homeless and wandered the streets of Ogden for years.

No, we’re not through.

Cut her foot, almost bled to death, developed severe infections, found God in a cardboard box, began mediating fights between drug lords, started writing poetry, healed miraculously, decided to come back to school and major in psychology. What could I say? I felt so jaded pointing out errors in punctuation or word usage, but I just didn’t have the time or energy to muster much beyond that. The sustained tone, emotional impact, and incredible length of this paper made the session seem endless. I needed air. I needed a walk. I needed Ding Dongs (4) and Pepsi.

Before she left I printed her a copy of John G. Magee Jr.’s poem “High Flight” which seemed appropriate given the poetry samples she had included in her paper. (See? I’m not completely heartless.) Incidentally, as I was traipsing around campus this week administering dev math surveys, I ran into her. We were both waiting for the same math class. Small talk seemed pointless after that life story. Awkward. So I’ve made a decision. We all have certain topics that we’d rather not tutor. I’ll take on the pregnancy and enema sessions, and y’all can have the catastrophic, novel-length life stories. What a deal.