Heck Of A Guy

Introduction

For the past several months, I’ve been sporadically making my way through Julie’s paper and electronic files, a task I should have completed years ago but instead deferred for what I think are transparently obvious reasons. In any case, one of the bonuses of this effort has been the occasional detection and excavation of documents long forgotten. While we were fastidious about backing up and saving certain categories of business detritus (if you’re the sort who gets turned on by the sight of every cancelled check written for a group psychiatric practice from 1985-1990, have I got a treat for you), we were cavalier about informal communications and other materials that I would value far more now.

In previous postings, I’ve mentioned some of the odds and ends I’ve come across in her computer archives and my own files (e.g., the reference to Julie’s Halloween reading on This American Life, some Internet classics that found their way into our email and subsequently into postings here, the memos regarding Julie’s hospitalizations, etc.).

Apropos to the season, I recently unearthed (actually, re-unearthed) a few Christmas newsletters that somehow escaped the purges that consumed most of these publications. Among my aberrant character traits is a fondness for a well-done Christmas newsletter.¹ Consequently, I’m willing to inflict a few of these convenient, self-serving and admittedly labor-saving discoveries.

Today’s Wayback Machine offering is the 1988 Christmas newsletter² written and sent under the auspices of my psychiatric group (“Touchstone” was our DBA du jour), but our business and personal lives in those days were, as you will see, intimately intertwined. Feel free to wax nostalgic.

The Touchstone Group Christmas 1988 Newsletter

As you will immediately discern (or else we’ve blown a batch of bucks for nothing), Touchstone’s Christmas present was a Mac 11. The consequent outpouring of literary efforts this acquisition could provoke has the potential, no doubt, to strike terror in the hearts of those of us whose in-boxes already overflow, not with the milk of human kindness, but rather with the Kool-aid of human self-aggrandizement. But, fear not; while our mailings may never approach the production values of the Sharper Image catalogue, neither will they rival its ubiquity. We do plan to publish a Touchstone newsletter in a nifty format on a moderately regular schedule – although we don’t intend to get unnecessarily rigid about this last point

Since my last correspondence, Touchstone has had the opportunity to meet numerous challenges. A notable example follows:

For a psychiatric group that prides itself on accessibility and availability (marketing code words for “returns telephone calls”), ‘What,” one could rhetorically ask, “could be a greater disaster than a catastrophic, prolonged interruption of telephone service?” “Well,” one could rhetorically answer, “how about a catastrophic, prolonged interruption of telephone service only in that group’s area, leaving competing groups untouched and referral sources with functional phones somewhat confused?” (Yes, if you want to get pedantic about it, I suppose that particular rhetorical question does have other possible answers, such as bankruptcy, the bubonic plague, giant sunspot eruptions destroying North America and Greenland, or the replacement of mental health professionals by a resurgence of interest in mood rings — but none of those would fit the anecdote I want to relate.)

In May, we were disconcerted to learn that our business phones (located in our Westmont office) and the personal phones of the Group’s two heaviest telephone users were temporarily out of order; we were dismayed when we found that “temporarily” could mean a week; a few days later, we should have been devastated when “temporarily” turned out to be almost two months.

And, in fact, we would have been devastated if we hadn’t been so busy.

For several hours after the problem began, our communications center operated from car phones³ the parking lot. Then, Michelle Peterson (our new Business Manager — this was her welcome to the job) commandeered one of our clinical offices in Chicago with a functional phone (that’s not a typo; it was a “phone,” not “phones” – but it did have call waiting) to serve as the interim replacement for our incredibly sophisticated, incredibly expensive, and incredibly inoperative office phone network.

Julie (my love, my life, my Touchstone Director of Financial Operations), after checking potential solutions at hospitals and other offices, established a workable communication system from a heterogeneous mix of portable phones with extra batteries, pagers, messengers, a complex schedule of prearranged calls, a new answering service, extra lines installed at the Chicago office, and a scheme for shuttling personnel between offices.

Within 24 hours after the problem began, we contacted all of our current patients, all of our hospitals, and over 350 of our colleagues, referring agencies, and physicians, social workers, psychologists, and other counselors with home we work, to explain the situation and provide working numbers by which to contact us.

Anyway, this turned out to be a wonderful experience; our admission rate actually went up, we had exactly zero complaints, it unified us as a team, it strengthened our character, and if it ever happens again, I’ll go back to working at McDonalds.

On a more joyous if no less frightening note, our two year old, Sam, continues to win over the hearts and minds of his parents as well as any other adult within a 200 mile radius. Sam (AKA “Hell on Wheels”) has also learned his numbers up to ten although in his renditions of them he adheres to Emerson’s dictum that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” He has also been able to teach me something that his mother and several teachers haven’t — what two year olds actually do when they attend pre pre-pre-school. The answer? They exchange diseases so that their parents can experience them all. I can hear it now:

Peer: “I’ll trade you my runny nose for your upset tummy.”
Sam: “No, that won’t work; I already gave Daddy a runny nose for his birthday. How about chicken pox?”

He has also accumulated a fascinating repertoire of songs, including such classics as ‘Old MacDonald” (his favorite animal is the goat), “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” (which he can sing ad nauseam, a fact which triggers tremors of anxiety when I estimate his potential for incessant vocalization of preadolescent, parental torture songs of the “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” sort), and, for reasons that are not at all clear, “We Will, We Will Rock You.”

Julie (AKA Sam’s Mom, AKA my wife), is embarking on her sixth ultrasuccessful career. In the past she taught university level English courses, ran the advertising department of a Texas bank, managed a section of the market research staff at Sears headquarters, served as a vice president of a marketing research firm in the suburbs, and, until recently, functioned as the Business Manager of Touchstone. As of October, she ceded the role of Business Manager to Michelle and became Touchstone’s CFO and Director of Marketing. It’s not clear whether she likes new challenges or just gets bored easily. In either case, it’s with some pride that I note that, at this point, she has remained affiliated with me longer than she has remained in any of her other, less onerous jobs.

As the result of a process of organizational introspection that has taken up much of the past year at Touchstone, I have resolved to plan new projects more completely. As a result, Touchstone’s most recent project startup, The Girls Program at Mercy Hospital, has already celebrated its first anniversary as of November 1988. I must digress a moment but, hey, it’s my letter. Let me put this as humbly as I can: The Girls Program is a big, big success. It’s such a success, in fact, that other hospitals are asking us to start similar programs at their facilities.

In spite of these requests and my hitherto invariable preference for a “ready, fire, aim” methodology in personal and business affairs, I have not committed to a new project in days. This is analogous to the Happy Hooker entering a convent.

OK, there are a couple of new program possibilities under consideration; I doubt I hat I’ve permanently reformed.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch — in return for the continued success of the adolescent programs at XXXXX Hospital and the adult program’s exponential growth this year, those psychiatric units will be receiving a modestly delayed Christmas present of new landscaping, redecorating, and a new name. I would tell you more about the new name, but I see that our time is almost up for this letter.

Sam is picking up the essence if not the exact lyrics of ‘Jingle Bells;” my parents have winterized their recreational vehicle for the annual Christmas trek to Chicago; Julie and I have saved a huge amount of shopping time by just purchasing a medium size, local Toys R Us store as Sam’s gift; the Touchstone business office is bustling despite being awash in tinsel, food, and wrapping paper; and the Touchstone clinicians are conjoining transference interpretations with seasons’ greetings. It must be that time of year.

Happy holidays from our family to yours.

1. It could be worse; a correspondent recently confessed to her predilection for fruitcakes.↩
2. There were at least two earlier Christmas newsletters, but they are among the missing.↩
3. Note: For you youngsters, “car phones” in those days weren’t just the personal mobile phones one carried when driving. Car phones were hard wired into the automobile and required special antennae. They were also expensive and, in 1988, still rare enough that one would not assume that another individual would own one. “Portable phones” were hefty affairs that should have been equipped with shoulder straps; they featured a talk time of 15-20 minutes and the wise owner had at least a couple of extra batteries as backups. Most clinicians, even those who owned car phones and personal phones, depended on pagers.↩