Dr. Fletcher

(writing notes) Gary has recently been having trouble with a more traditional OCD problem - contamination.

Gary

I was walking around the block in my neighborhood and all of a sudden this windstorm came out of nowhere. Wind was blowing everywhere and it really picked up. I was walking on the sidewalk and all this trash, these newspapers picked up out of the gutter and from trash cans and started blowing towards me.

I can't deal with newspaper. It's contaminated. I had to get away so I rushed into the nearest building that was open and I went inside. It turned out it was an orphanage. And Sunday night, I guess they have open-mic night.

So I'm a good-natured guy, I'm philanthropic. I thought, what the hell. I'll give it a try. I think I'm a funny guy. So I get up on stage and I start of soft-balling some stuff. Just kids' jokes, things that everyone knows. Knock-knock jokes, 'A guy walks into a bar and says ouch.'

These kids are just going crazy. I haven't felt this good about myself in months. I mean, they're loving it. They're eating it up. And I have no idea how these kids hadn't heard these jokes before. I was borne and bred on these jokes.

Dr. Fletcher

Ah, because they're around other kids and these are kids' jokes.

Gary

Yeah, I mean in an orphanage I would assume kids would be telling jokes. They don't have parents. They've got to find some way to make life enjoyable. But they were eating it up so I decided that I'd maybe try some of my own material. I had this monologue I had been working on. I thought, what the hell. I had it memorized. I'll give it a shot. So I launched into it.

Dr. Fletcher

(writing notes) Gary is not such a bad guy but I think there is some worry that without the OCD, opportunities like this orphanage open-mic might not come up for him.

Gary

And these kids, they weren't getting any of the jokes. And I noticed some kids in the front were talking to each other. I was getting pretty disconcerted on stage and these kids weren't liking what I was doing so I decided maybe I'd slip in an orphan joke at the end. Close with a bang. I thought it was something certainly close to heart. I can laugh at myself, I can laugh at my OCD. Why can't they laugh at themselves?

So I launch into this joke. It's a joke a friend of mine told me a couple years ago. It's pretty dirty but I thought for the situation it was appropriate. So basically there's this eight-year-old kid and he's sitting at home. He's eating mac n'cheese and he's watching t.v. He's watching Letterman or something.

All of a sudden the phone rings and he picks up the phone and it's a policeman who's calling to tell this kid that both of his parents were just killed in a horrible car accident. So this kid starts crying. He doesn't know what to do. And his sister comes in and he relates the message to his sister and she's so shocked that she clasps her heart and she falls down to the ground, dead.

So this orphan - this new orphan - he doesn't know what the fuck to do. So he runs to the medicine cabinet. He grabs all of his parents' prescriptions. And then he goes to his dad's bedroom and he opens the drawer and he gets the gun and the pocketknife -

Dr. Fletcher

Yeah, Gary, actually our hour is up so I'm afraid we're going to have to stop.

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