Ego Amigos: Flirtin’ with the Flim-Flam
Meet Joe. Joe thinks he’s here. That means Joe needs scapegoats. So the mind that thinks it is Joe writes a script. Joe’s mother won’t pat him on the back when he gets A’s on his tests. Boohoo! So Joe walks through life feeling deprived of pats on the back. And therefore needy of the same.
Score: Scapegoats one, sanity zero.
One day Joe meets Jane who is a great back-patter. He sees Jane as the perfect back-patter lack-filler, which means he doesn’t really see Jane, he sees a back-patter filler-upper. Joe thinks he loves Jane, the back-patter filler-upper, but he just loves filler-uppers of the back-patter variety, so he doesn’t care that the filler-upper relationship is not so good for Jane. But Jane makes it easy, she tells Joe it’s A-ok because, feeling empty, she too is secretly looking for someone: a needy back-patter-lacker so she can be perfect at something, the perfect back-patter-lacker filler-upper… which gives her back that filled-up feeling. Intense love feelings follow, pitter-patter, pitter-patter, but they don’t really love each other because they can’t see each other — they’re dancing with shadows. They think they love the filled-up feeling, but they really love the scapegoat shuffle, which hides their true love, the separation shimmy.
One day Joe does something he feels is worthy of an A, and Jane the perfect back-patter filler-upper misses her cue and there’s hurly burly. Pitter-patter skips a beat, and turns to bitter-banter. Now poor Jane is just like another-mother, a back-patter depriver jiver. Their boogie-woogie, the scapegoat shuffle, hits a kerfluffle and does a teeter-totter, special-lover turns to special-hater, Joe feels more deprived than ever, and Jane feels like a useless-piece-of-smitten-smatter.
Score: Scapegoats two, sanity zero.
The separation shimmy continues.
