Tag Archives: problems

A Man Named Piddly-Poo

Posted on by under Yarns

Once upon a time, there lived a man named Piddly-Poo, but before that, he was a boy named Piddly-Poo, and that was no fun, either. His peers were every bit as cruel as you’d expect, and his teachers tried to find a suitable nickname for him, but try as they might – Piddle, Poo, P.P. – they only made things harder for him. His best friend, Jacob, called him Pid, and when he grew up, this was the name he introduced himself by, but the truth always came out in the end, at which point, he was castigated for his own shame.

“I mean, if your name is Piddly-Poo, you should just own it,” said a disgusted barista in one such circumstance, seeing his credit card after having written “Pid” on the cardboard cup. Pid ran out of the Starbucks crying and never drank coffee again.

He couldn’t afford it anyway, as he couldn’t get any sort of well-paying job with his name. He worked as a maintenance man, and he had to wear overalls with “Piddly-Poo” embroidered above his left pec. The old ladies in his building gave him the stink eye. They thought it was some sort of fresh joke.

He had an online dating profile, in which he called himself P. McAllister, and he got a few dates this way, but at some point in the relationship, the woman would find out, and Pid could see the interest slide off their faces, as if they had become suddenly fatigued or mournful. He wished he could find a woman named, say, Tinkly-Bittles, but deep down, he knew he wouldn’t want to be with a woman with a stupid name.

One day, Pid was moaning to his friend Jacob about how his name had ruined his entire life and damned all options before he’d even had the chance to make his own mistakes, and Jacob said, “Why don’t you just have your name changed? I don’t think it’s really that complicated.”

Pid had never thought of doing that before.

It was weird that he hadn’t, but it never occurred to him. He’d just collapsed under his name and let it smother him as if he had no choice in the matter at all.

So, he changed his name to “Paul.” “Paul McAllister.” Jacob was right – it wasn’t very hard. In fact, it was insultingly easy after all the pain and trouble Pid – Paul – had been through. He should have done it years ago.

He found, however, that his life did not steadily improve under his new moniker the way he’d hoped it would. He still had a shitty job. People were still dismissive of him. He still had trouble with women. And beyond all that, he felt weirdly lost. He no longer had a very clearly defined enemy.

On the one-year anniversary of his new name, Paul walked through a park near his house, down to a little river, where he liked to sit and think. He realized there was really no one in the world he could talk to about his problems, and he wished that a fish would come, or a squirrel, or some sort of being that he could address. But none did, so he took a little rock from nearby and settled it in his lap.

“The thing is,” he said to the rock. “I’ve always been Piddly-Poo. Much as I hate it, I don’t know how to be a man without a stupid name. I don’t know who I am now. I don’t know what to do.”

The rock just sat there, though. As it happened, the rock’s name was Larry, but Paul was too self-absorbed to even ask.

The Most Accurate Diagnosis

Posted on by under Humor

Welcome to self-diagnosis.com. Please utilize the following symptom checker to obtain your diagnosis:

1. Do you feel that you are more unhappy than most other people?

2. Do you feel you have less energy than most other people?

3. Do you feel you have less money and less going for you, and generally fewer reasons to get up in the morning than most other people?

4. Do you suffer from anxiety, even when you are not sure what is making you anxious?

5. Are you anxious and worried when meeting new people? Do you have trouble making eye contact? Do you worry about how other people view you? If you do not talk to a friend for some time, do you begin to think that they might be angry at you? Do you obsessively run over and over the things that you said the last time you saw them, and attempt to figure out how they might have taken something the wrong way?

6. Do you often think that friends and relatives are talking unfavorably about you when you are not there?

7. Does thinking this make you cry?

8. Does crying about this then make you resolve never to speak to those friends or relatives ever again, and to make all new friends and relatives, and be a much more successful, entertaining and attractive person?

9. When you think of the sort of new person you’ll be, do you picture a particular celebrity?

10. Do you feel lonely? Isolated? Alienated? Misunderstood? Maligned? Persecuted? Overlooked?

11. Do you often overeat?

12. Do you sweat copiously, and does this sweating often humiliate you in public and/or on dates?

13. Do you worry that you smell, or that parts of you smell, but you cannot smell it, but everybody else can smell it, but they’re too polite to tell you?

14. Are you preoccupied with sex?

15. Do you often lie awake all night longing for death?

16. Do you often lie awake all night trembling in fear of death?

17. Sometimes both in the same night?

18. Do you worry that you are afflicted with an undiagnosed, terminal medical condition? When you hear that an acquaintance has been diagnosed with a condition, do you begin to see symptoms of that condition in yourself?

19. Do you have difficultly losing weight? Do you feel that you gain weight more easily and lose it with more difficultly than everybody else? Are you gassier than other people seem to be?

20. Do you have a difficult time focusing on work, hobbies, or other people when they are talking to you? Do you often wish you were somewhere else doing something different? Do you have difficulty beginning and/or completing tasks? Do you often procrastinate? Do you have a hard time remembering names, faces, and/or things that other people have said to you? Do you have a tough time working up an interest in things not immediately concerning you?

21. Do you find that what you mostly do is eat, drink and watch television, and while theoretically, there are any number of things you’d rather be doing, in actual practice, it seems that all you really want to be doing at any given time is eating, drinking and watching television?

22. Do you think that, deep down, you’re really probably very smart, but tragically, because of various problems with society right now and/or the shortcomings of various people in your life and/or a near constant lack of funds, you might never realize your full potential?

23. Are you often completely overcome with rage over something that is actually pretty trivial? When this happens, do you swear and throw things and make a total ass of yourself?

24. Do you often wish that some secret government agency would come and whisk you off the couch, erase your identity, force you to get in really good shape, and then send you off on incredibly important secret missions with an attractive and tortured partner?

25. Do you think that possibly this has already happened in your past, but your memories have since been erased, and that’s why you feel so much more unhappy than those around you and have such a vague, inexplicable sense of loss and emptiness? Or that possibly, all this (or something similar) is really happening to you right now, but you don’t realize it, because you are just a brain floating in a vat hooked up to electrodes?

–

You answered Yes to all of the above.

Your diagnosis: You may be suffering from a common, yet poorly understood condition called ‘Living.’ This condition is incurable, and ultimately terminal. While there is no known cure for this horrible, painful and devastatingly widespread affliction, your doctor may be able to prescribe a number of medications that can help to relieve the more intolerable symptoms of Living. It may help to know that you are not alone – a full 100% of the world’s population suffers from Living (although less than half of that number are aware they have the disorder). Currently, there are many experts struggling to better understand the causes and effects of Living. Unfortunately, research in this area is woefully underfunded, but as more and more citizens become aware that they are themselves suffering from Living, more attention will surely be given to investigating this complex and mysterious condition.