Two on the other.

I was on my way to New York for my Blue Man Group call back / training session.

It was definitely a DC 9. It had the engines at the back. It was damn loud and difficult to have a conversation.

The man sitting next to me was a psychotherapist. Though at the time I had a therapist, this was long before I had ever imagined becoming a therapist.

His long silver hair was brushed back. He was wearing a jacket with elbow patches. It was like I was sitting next to Frasier Crane. He looked like a therapist.

“So, when you were therapized, did all of your jackets suddenly develop elbow patches?”

My jokes were funny to me. At that moment, it was all that mattered.

He was a curious guy, both gentle and invasive at the same time.

He asked, as sensitive Americans sometimes do, about what I imagined the difference to be between Canada and the US.

Invariably, I said something about healthcare, violence of inception and Puritanism.

He jumped on the healthcare theme. His question to me went something like this:

If health care is a human right and it’s free in Canada, can you agree that housing is a right as well? If so, then why do we not provide that for free as well?

I paused.

Good question.

“Low hanging fruit.”

“What?”

“Low hanging fruit. Enough doctors get into medicine to care for people, to increase the health in the world, that it was easy to pressure a bunch of them to have socialized medicine. I don’t think the same could be said about real estate agents.”

The encounter was so short it barely happened.

And I think about that guy every now and then.

I wonder if he’s dead or alive.

I wonder what it would be like to talk with him about being a therapist.

No phone. No name. No business card. No books. No connecting.

Well. No connecting beyond an hour long conversation between two therapists. One late career. One who didn’t know it yet.

It’s like the old saying goes:

Every time you cook a pancake, a goblin does a cartwheel.