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Biggest Fanny

Now when I arrived in Michigan at Wayne County Hospital I encountered a most unusual person. A young girl, medical technician, rather pretty, well-formed except she had the biggest, HUGEST fanny I had ever seen on any girl. And when she walked down the corridor I noticed that when she passed somebody she’d swing her fanny angrily toward that person. Well that interested me. So I made it a point to keep an eye open ’cause I wanted to see what that girl is going to DO with that great big fanny of hers. And I noticed that every visiting day was her day off and at the entrance of the grounds she met the mothers and their children . . . always asked the mother if she could give the children a piece of gum, a piece of candy, a toy, and volunteered to take care of the children while . the mother visited the patient. And for a whole year that went on. That seemed to be her entire life, looking after those visitor children, and she gave every evidence of making that her one and only joy in life. So that gave me ANOTHER idea about her. Then one day she suddenly developed the hiccups. She hiccupped night and day. We had a staff of 169 physicians, they all examined her and could find nothing wrong with her and they finally told her she would have to have a psychiatrist consultation. She knew what THAT meant. I’d be the psychiatrist called in and she politely refused to have a psychiatrist called in. So, she was informed she was being hospitalized in Wayne County Hospital for free and receiving her pay, “you’re paid even though you’re not working, everything is being taken care of for you as if you were fully employed. If you’re not going to take medical advice just resign your position, call a private ambulance and go to a private hospital and get over the hiccups there!” She thought that over and said she’d permit me to see her. So at two o’clock that afternoon I walked into her room, closed the door behind me, and said, “Keep your mouth shut! Listen! I’ve got a few things to say to you and I want you to listen ’cause you need an understanding. I KNOW you’ve got the biggest fanny in creation. I KNOW you don’t like it but it IS yours. And you like children, therefore you’d like to get married, have children of your own. And you’re afraid that great big fanny of yours is a barrier . . . that’s your error. You haven’t read the Song of Solomon. You SHOULD have read your bible. The pelvis is mentioned as the cradle of children.” I said, “The man who will want to marry you will not see a great big fat fanny . . . he’ll see a wonderful cradle for children.” She listened quietly. “Men who want to father children DO want a nice cradle for the child.” And when I finished my speech I said, “You can think it over. After I leave keep on hiccupping. There is no reason for anybody except you and I to know you don’t NEED those hiccups. You have something of great VALUE so let your hiccups disappear around 10:30 tonight, 11 o’clock, that way nobody will say a psychiatrist cured you, that my interview was an utter failure.” So her hiccups disappeared around that time. She went back to work and one day at lunch time while my secretary was having lunch she came into my office and said, “Here is something I want you to see.” She showed me her engagement ring. She said, “I thought you should be the first person to see this.” Sometime later she privately brought a young man into the office to meet me—her fiance. They were married shortly and started raising a family. Now reorientation of thinking … I called her fanny a great big fat fanny, as big as I had ever seen. I told her she hated it, but she didn’t understand it. Then I presented it as a cradle for children against my background of knowing how much she liked ^children. And how a man who would want to father children WOULD want a nice cradle for children. Now I didn’t need to go into the past, I could just discuss the current state of affairs . . . reorienting her thinking, reorienting her thinking in accord with her own secret desires. I was unafraid to call her fanny a big fat fanny, so she knew I was telling the truth, so she could believe what I said. I don’t like doctors who pussyfoot around and try to say things sweetly and gently. The truth should be told simply, straight-forward fashion because that is the ONLY way the patient is actually going to absorb therapy and proceed to benefit. And once you get them reoriented, their nose pointed down the road, they’ll go.

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