New World (Dis)Order(s) for Your Next Discussion Group
The turning of the screwy
By Ed Goldman
With the kids heading back to school any day now, I’m afraid you’ll need to discover for yourself everything that’s wrong with you. Here’s a handy guide to a variety of previously taboo ailments:
– HANGER MANAGEMENT: The inability to prevent wire hangers from multiplying and entangling themselves in your closet, then falling onto the floor when you attempt to separate them.
Good grief counseling
– PDDD (POST-DRAMATIC DRESS DISORDER): The not-uncommon regret some people feel the day after a major gala in which their ensemble seemed a bit “over the top.” This is an all-gender dilemma, though for veteran transvestites “over the top” merely means how to remove a zipperless gown.
– SUB STINTS ABUSE: When young people fail to show up for work on time at sandwich shops, they are engaging in this. If they don’t actually work at the shop in question, this can be acutely problematic.
– INATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER: Not properly displaying boredom, ennui or inertia when a decreasingly-significant-other criticizes you for your general lack of enthusiasm about anything he or she has to say.
-THANXIETY ATTACK: This occurs when you’ve let too much time elapse before you send a thank-you note to someone who had you over for dinner or sent you a birthday present. Eleven months ago.
– PAIR ANNOY YA: This develops in the weeks after you agree to join a couple you can’t stand on a Carnival Cruise—to either Ensenada or an emergency room, depending on the food, air conditioning system and pandemic patients on board.
– BUY POLAR DISORDER: One’s inability to pass up a sale on winter-sports fashions. This is often compounded by the following malady.
– SKISOPHRENIA:The fear that your new romantic partner will ask you to go on a skiing trip to Aspen after you hinted (lied) you’d been all set to compete in the 2001 Winter Olympics but had to drop out at the last minute due to a hemorrhoid attack.
– TONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME: A boredom that sets in when your usual vodka or gin cocktail mixer no longer satisfies.
– A CUTE TRAUMA: When your four-year-old grandchildren pout because you didn’t buy them that dwarf pony you promised in exchange for their guaranteeing they’d keep it in the bathtub.
– COMPLEX TRAUMA: When you can’t locate, among the 17 movie theaters in the building, the one showing the film you bought tickets for days in advance online. This is compounded when none of the young workers in the building know where the film you’re looking for is showing and suggest you may have come to the wrong complex since there’s another identical one in the mall across the boulevard. (This really happened to me, by the way.)
– AGROPHOBIA: Similar to agoraphobia (the fear of open spaces)in that the sufferer is afraid he or she will awake on a vast farm and be asked to do completely unfamiliar chores.
– PLATOPHOBIA: Spun off from the actual plutophobia (fear of money—seriously), this condition emerges when your employer impulsively decides you and your colleagues need to take Greek language classes on your lunch hour.
– OBSESSIVE-REPULSIVE DISORDER: This is all about the people who insist on looking at things they normally couldn’t stomach—e.g., political ads and debates, butt-crack-exposing urban gang and plumber pants, any fast-food item whose name ends in “extreme,” pickleball championship games, wild animals savaging weaker wild animals on “Nova,” and the fine print on their reverse mortgages or pre-nups.
– BULLEMIA: A healthy fear of traveling to Pamplona in July.
– SIGH-COSIS: The irresistible impulse to utter “awws” and “adorbs” when viewing babies, puppies, kitties, otters, ring-tailed lemurs and toreador pants worn by young hyenas.
– JULIA CHILD NEGLECT: Suffered by arrogant dinner hosts who think they can prepare a fine French meal without consulting a cookbook. Also related to Julia Child Abuse and Julia Child Abandonment.
Don’t forget! A new Goldman State Podcast drops every Friday!
Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).
