Bad Things

I am certainly happy that I am not that guy's therapist; the guy who went berserk at Virginia Tech. I guess there will be all kinds of explanations later. I feel awful for the parents of the kids who died. I guess I feel worse for the kids.

I have had clients with close relatives who died on 9/11. I have had clients whose cousins were shot on the street here in our smallish city. Ours has always been a culture that has very mixed feelings about violence. Look who won the Best Picture Oscar.

On a smaller scale one of my most placid clients, who is literally a gray-haired old lady, told me this morning about how vengeful she has become.

She lives in an apartment on the second floor. Basically her whole life is going to work, coming home, feeding her cat, putting on Mozart and reading Jane Austin. She has lived alone for almost forty years following a very brief marriage.

The man upstairs, directly above her, who she describes as shy, and sweet, but a drunk, met a woman on the Internet. She came from Eastern Europe and married him. Then she found out he is a drunk and is only interested in oral sex.

Anyway, once this woman realized what she had gotten into and would come downstairs to my client and complain about her new husband. This went on for months until my client told her, as nicely as she could, that she couldn't take it any more. She tried to make it clear that it wasn't personal. She told her that she didn't have any friends, and she wanted it to stay that way.

So, the imported bride went back upstairs and soon she started moving furniture every day, dragging tables across the floor. Then she begins to drop heavy things onto the floor. The she seems to have rolled up the rug, and clomps, with heavy heels across the floor. Often she would flush the toilet seven times in a row.

These things would never happen once the husband came home at about ten-thirty every night. Once the door slammed, the dancing was over.

Well, my client got the message. She complained to the management and realized that wasn't going to do anything. So, this very quite woman, who has always taken the blame for anything that went wrong in the world, began to retaliate. She began to bang pipes, she stuck a boom-box with Credence Clearwater into the heating ducts and played it loud for four hours a day. Finally, she learned how to turn on the hot water in the bathtub at just the right flow volume that the pipes screech and rattle the whole building.

This worked. Four days later the woman knocked on her door, her face pale and trembling, saying that my client should stop.

The new peace lasted about two months, until this weekend. For some reason the noise began again. My client felt there were a few too many things hitting the floor.

So she brought out her big guns right away. She wasn't going to stand for any more dropped books or heavy boots walking up and back. That part is fine. I was happy she was defending herself.

What was striking was the glee with which she described the power of knowing she was making that woman miserable again. My client was not going to go easy. She was paying back a few mortar shells with "Shock and Awe." She was loving it.

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I'll give three-to-one odds that it was some love/sex betrayal that sent this guy at VT over the edge. You can't mix hormones, rigidity and guns and get away with it. When I have rigid, angry guys I always ask about their guns, and if they will give them away for a while. Bad things can be avoided.