PSYCH OLOGI CAL EX PLO RATION

Most Neuropathies Are Idiopathic

James Howe

Published online: 30 March 2010� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

Most neuropathies are idiopathic

is what the doctor tells you as if the words are

somehow reassuring, when they are the opposite,

or if not the opposite then still not the words

you want to hear.

Your condition has no known cause is what

he’s telling you. Your pain, your fear, the feeling

that something is taking over your body like

some creepy 1950s sci-fi double bill you watched

one Saturday matinee at the theater downtown,

dropped off by your big brother who’d shoved

fifty cents in your hand, half for the ticket, half

for the popcorn and Junior Mints and the Mary

Janes you saved for the second feature because

they lasted the longest.

You remember how the scientists always figured

it out in the end, where the Blob came from, why

everyone acted drunk and crazy after the attack of

the toaster-headed men from Mars. You left the dark

movie theater, staggered into the blinding late

afternoon sun, your tongue still worrying the piece

of Mary Jane cemented to your upper right molar,

your mind still worrying that such things

could happen. So what if the Martians looked

phony and the Blob like some overgrown version

of what they were selling at the concession stand,

so what if the scientists in their white lab coats

J. Howe (&)18 Belmont Terrace, Yonkers, NY 10703, USAe-mail: howewrite@gmail.com; howewrite@aol.com

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J Relig Health (2010) 49:393–394DOI 10.1007/s10943-010-9349-4

and black plastic-framed glasses, pencil tapping the

clipboard always in their hands, reassured you

in the voice of the man telling the 6:00 news

that everything would be all right now that they

understood what had happened and had gotten

it under control. Didn’t the man telling the 6:00

news sometimes talk about murders without

motive, tidal waves and hurricanes and horrendous

traffic accidents that no one could explain? Or

were they somehow, always, explained? Did

idiopathic not exist in the 1950s?

You wouldn’t

mind if the doctor standing before you now was

wearing a white lab coat and black plastic-framed

glasses, was tapping his pencil on a clipboard,

was explaining it all to you, assuring you that

everything will be all right, everything will be

under control now that everything is understood.

You wouldn’t mind leaving his office with the

only worry being your tongue’s as it presses

against a bit of Mary Jane clinging to your tooth

as if it were holding on for dear life, as if

it knew that it was only a matter of time until

it too would be worn away and gone.

394 J Relig Health (2010) 49:393–394

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