I fall into a Category that health professionals refer to as ‘suggestible’. If I’m taking a medication, I can’t look at the list of possible side effects or I’ll most likely start to experience them. So it was with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation that I approached the portable folding tables that had been set up in Borders bookshop for Mental Health Screening yesterday.



I came upon the scene by accident. The bookshop is a social hub and includes a café. I usually plop down in one of their comfy leather chairs with a magazine for a quick rest when I’m out walking around town. Yesterday when I walked into the store, I immediately noticed that there was a lot more activity than usual. That’s when I saw the tables.

A large banner hung on the front of one of the tables. It read:

Mental Health Screening
How Are You Feeling Today?
Test Your Moods Here

Already, my mind was working. “Hmm. What is my mood today? Do I have one? Do I need to choose one?”

Then I saw a row of cards on the table. Each standing card had a category printed on it in bold letters. There was a stack of literature by each card category. My eyes scanned the categories from left to right. My mind was busy trying to choose one for me. Despite my best efforts to simply observe the scene objectively, I was being drawn into it.
Were the categories arranged in increasing severity? Did they include the entire spectrum of psychological maladies?

Here’s what the cards read:

“BIPOLAR DISORDER”

“POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS SYNDROME”

“GENERAL ANXIETY”

“DEPRESSION”

“SUICIDE”

“ESPANOL”

I privately selected Espanol as the category that most fit my mood for the afternoon. I wandered past the table to take in the rest of the scene. “Refreshments Provided By Trader Joes”. Volunteers had clipboards and nametags. Hmmm, that volunteer is cute. I wonder if I should try to flirt with her? Would she immediately start to try to categorize me? Maybe I should try to speak in Spanish to her? I don’t know very much Spanish. I still want to keep Espanol as my category though, if that’s O.K.

Beyond the tables, there was a large television and DVD player on a cart. On the screen, a distinguished-looking woman wearing a lab coat spoke. I couldn’t hear what she was saying though because my iPod was blasting Groove Salad in my ears, wrapping everything I saw in a surreal soundtrack. Folding chairs were set up in front of the video presentation. Most of the chairs were full, but nobody was watching the video. The participants were all busy filling out screening forms on clipboards.

I noticed that all of the participants were middle-aged women. I don’t think that means that middle-aged women are more likely to suffer from mental illness, or that they are more likely to be curious to know if they suffer from it. I just think it means that they are more likely to take the time to participate in a mental health screening in a bookshop on a Sunday afternoon in California, while the Oakland Raiders play the San Diego Chargers on network TV.

I got a magazine and took it over to the comfy chairs in the café, near the screening. A woman with a face and body a lot like Jabba the Hut was poured into the chair across from me. Her face was shaped like a pyramid, with the corners rounded, slightly. It was about two feet across at the chin, and about six inches wide at the top. Her Zippy look was accentuated by the fact that her hair was cut short, with boyish bangs that stuck out from her forehead.



She was talking so loudly to the guy in the chair next to me that I could hear her above Groove Salad, which was turned up to the equivalent of being in a nightclub. The guy sitting next to me was nodding politely. He had his shoes off. He wore argyle dress socks with his jeans. The woman was saying how she hated the food out here in California compared to New York. “You can’t get a good steak!” she shouted. “Am I right!?”

Eventually, the guy left. From time to time, I would glance up from my magazine to look at the woman. One time she was staring at the book she was reading. Her face was comically contorted in concentration. Her brow was slammed down over her eyes and her lips were jutting out. She looked like a boxer dog trying painfully to pass a leftover steak that its master had brought back from a restaurant. A New York steak, no doubt.

Later when I looked up, she was fiddling with a huge magnifying glass that had appeared from her large purse. Her face was even more contorted. Her mouth was twisted and her lips looked like those of a grouper who has swallowed a spiked puffer fish and is trying to cough it back up. There were some attachments on the magnifying glass, perhaps for propping it on a desk. She was having trouble with the attachments. Her mouth was open wide in a silent scream.

The last time I looked up, she was holding the thick magnifying glass up to her eye. Her face was still warped and throbbing in concentration as she gawped down at the pages of the book, as if straining intently to crap out giant East Coast steaks and other massive intestinal blockages. But now, from my perspective, the scene had taken on an even more Terry Gilliam-esque flavor as the huge glass lens magnified one eye and part of her face. She moved the glass around, making her eye bulge and distort.



I decided that my psychological screening was complete.

I went home and fed my cats.