A Strange Neurosis

Dan Kauffman called it that.

"A strange neurosis," he told me, "evidently contagious -- an epidemic of mass hysteria."

Jimmy Grimaldi was suffering from it, he continued. So was Becky Driscoll's aunt, Wilma. She thought her husband, Ira, wasn't Ira anymore.

A strange neurosis. By noon, a dozen people had "caught" it. They were sure their loved ones were imposters. "The oddest thing I've ever heard of," Kauffman said. I agreed.

The "new" loved ones looked no different from their old selves. They retained all the memories they were supposed to have. They sounded exactly the same as they always had, as far as I could tell. The same structural likeness.

Yet they were indistinct ... vague. Like the first impression that's stamped on a coin, they had no rough edges, no lines of character in their voices. They were, to a one, calm and rational and logical. They clucked with minor reproach when told their relatives thought they were fakes. But every expression was bland. Nothing bothered them.

Ask about the war and they shrugged. Ask how they felt about the country's enemies and they merely murmured something about how everything was going to be all right once everybody got a good night's sleep.

That sort of detachment isn't unusual. In my practice I've seen people who allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happens slowly instead of all at once. We harden our hearts and grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us. How dear.

What was happening in Santa Mira, however -- it was all at once, and the people didn't seem to mind. If anything they acted happy, without any cares in the world. You could have told them that the president was going to drop nuclear weapons in the Middle East and most of them would have simply nodded in approval and gone off with their faint smiles.

Wait. That's not quite right. There was anger lurking beneath the placid surface. Becky's uncle, Ira, clenched his jaw when I suggested that there were plenty of worries in the world -- that war and arrogance and hate were going to be the death of us all.

"Death?" Ira snorted, and I saw his jawbone working. "The only ones dying are the ones who can't see the better way of living." He smiled, but only a little, and his jawbone kept working, grinding, clenching.

"Once you get that through that head of yours, Doc, you'll know what I'm talking about," Ira said. "Once you get a good night's sleep you'll see that as clearly as I do. As clearly as the rest of us see it."