Magical Thinking

EPISODE 7
SCENE #1
FLLOYD
Thunder's Mouth Theatre presents: Am I Old Yet?, a slice of life gentle comedy for our time. Now, I'm going to take a leaf out of the playbook of one of my favourite podcasts. It's called "Sorry About the Murders" and it's hilarious. Every episode, the announcer gives a list of topics covered in the episode. It's pretty much always the same list of things, like drunkenness and murder. That won't work for Am I Old Yet? Because Helen gets up to different stuff as she goes. This episode, a long telephone conversation with her daughter Janey, contains references to - wait for it - magical thinking, accent modification and linguistics, dementia, neurodiversity, categories and the cosmos. You have been warned! Enjoy

JANEY

So you're into magical thinking now, Mum? Are you?

HELEN
ON THE PHONE
What do you mean? What? I'm into what? Magical thinking. What's magical thinking? You can't think magically. I'm either thinking, or I'm not thinking. No, I've no idea what you're talking about, Janie. Get down to it, eh? 
JANEY
Down to what?

What's what's what's this? What did I say that made you say something about magical thinking? What were we talking about anyway?
JANEY
Oh, Mum, are you losing your marbles?
HELEN
No, Janey. Well, yes, I am but the thing is I haven't lost them yet. They're just rolling around loose inside my head. I think they're still there.
JANEY
Oh well, that's that that that's good. Right.
HELEN
What makes you think I'm losing my marbles?
JANEY
Well, you're talking about seeing things that you know aren't there? But you say you can see them. That sounds a bit like magical thinking to me.
HELEN
You're going to have to define magical thinking for me, Janie.
JANEY
Oh, it's. just thinking something's real that isn't. I think I'll have to look it up.
HELEN
Oh, so you're just throwing around expressions? What do you call them? Analogies, Metaphors.

JANEY
Do you still say metaphor, Mom? I say metaphor these days. Everybody else is doing it, so I thought I'd catch up with everybody else.
HELEN
Ah, so you're keeping up with the younguns, are you?
JANEY
Well, it's not necessarily the young people who are saying it's it's older, older expert type people who are saying it. Metaphor.
HELEN
Well, it just sounds like people trying to sound posh to me.
JANEY
Oh! well, quite possibly it is, but maybe they are. They just are posh, and they can't help it. I suppose there's always that. Oh, there's my timer. Um, I can call you back, but I'll have to go and attend to the bread.
HELEN
What? No, I'll wait. Nothing better to do. I'll just sit here. I'll put the phone down, and I'll have a wander. You go do what you have to do, and I'll still be here.

Janey
Okay, five minutes probably. That's all it takes. Oh, I know. Look up. Magical thinking.
HELEN
There's a thought.

FADE OUT. MUSIC

SCENE #2

JANEY
ON THE PHONE
Ok I’m back.  Are you still there? Mum?  Mu-um! Hello?  Mum?
HELEN
(Away)
Hang on. Won’t be a minute.
JANEY
Ok…
HELEN
Right.  You still there?
JANEY
I’m still here. That oven gets more temperamental by the minute.
HELEN
Good. Now don’t interrupt, I have to tell you this before I forget it.
JANEY
What?
HELEN.
Magical thinking.  It doesn’t mean what you thought it did.
JANEY
Really?
HELEN
No. It’s not - whatever you said it was, it’s about thinking you can affect physical objects with your mind. Just by thinking it.
JANEY
Like Telekinesis?
HELEN
What?
Janey
Telekinesis.  Moving things around with your mind. Isn’t that what you said?

Helen
Oh.  Yes, probably. Is that what I said?
JANEY
Yes mum. By the way, do you know, you sound more posh by the minute.
HELEN
Do I? Really? Surely not.
JANEY
Who's Shirley?
HELEN
Oh, don't go with that one.
JANEY
(Giggles) All right.
HELEN
But do I? Really? I suppose it's all those years of talking to you. I don't. I don't think I know any posh people. Ah. No. I used to back in the day when you were at high school. Some of your friends had very nice parents who spoke posh. Well, I don't think it affected my accent.
JANEY
Of course it did, Mom, everybody's accent modifies with the people they talk to.
HELEN
Yeah, I know that, but some people more than others, and I don't think I'm a more than others kind of person.
JANEY
Maybe not. But you haven't, you haven't been back to Australia for quite a long time to get a top up, have you?
HELEN
No, I haven't. And Joey’s the only person out there that I'm talking to on any kind of regular basis, and she doesn't sound remotely Australian, even though she's lived there for 50 years.
JANEY
Yes, it's interesting, but she doesn't. You can't quite tell where in America she's from, though, can you?
HELEN
No, it's quite a quite a cacophony of different regions, all vaguely New Yorky, though. New Yorky. That'll be a new accent term, I suppose. Well, if I have anything to say with it, it will. It will. If I have anything to do with it, it will. Did you see how I got that back to front just then?
JANEY
Yes, I did.
HELEN
Well, that's very kind of you not to comment on it.
JANEY
No, well, there's not much point in commenting when I know that you know, right?
HELEN
But you remember when, when your grandmother used to do it back in the day, not long before she died, the last year or so, she would say absolutely, totally inappropriate words, but in the context that she was talking, it was sounds like… you know… it was almost a, it was a sounds like word.
JANEY
A Malapropism.
HELEN
A what?  Oh! Malapropism, that’s it. And she never seemed to notice that she was doing it. So we never liked to correct her. But whereas I know I'm doing it, and I will correct myself straight. Oh, maybe I'm doing it, and I'm not correcting myself because I don't know. I only know the times that I do know.
JANEY
What?
HELEN
Well, I know the times that I know, but I don't know the times that I don't know. But I'm still doing it. Sometimes I know I'm doing it, and sometimes I don't know I'm doing it. Is that possible?
JANEY
I suppose so.  I hadn't noticed you doing it at any times without acknowledging it, when you were in front of me. So to speak.
HELEN
Oh, good, because I'm-I'm sort of-you know-it sounds daft, but I'm having fun with them. I think it's quite creative, you know. It's like my language is evolving, is making mistakes, and anyway, oh, I've just had an interesting thought. I think it's a scientifically valid thought, because you know how young people are always coming up with what you and I would consider mispronunciations of words or wrong words, and they think it's the right word, and we know what they mean, but we know it's wrong.
JANEY
Yes, I do very much.
HELEN
Well, and that's how the language changes, because when enough people change the way a word is pronounced or what a word means, it becomes eventually, the new change becomes a convention, and hence language has evolved. So maybe I'm just part of that.
JANEY
Oh well, that's one way of looking at it.
HELEN

Well, it beats blaming a slowly dementing brain, doesn't it?
JANEY
Yes, it definitely beats that. Is that what you're thinking? You're thinking you're becoming. You're you're getting dementia.
HELEN
Well, it's a possibility. I mean, it's no respecter of persons. Why should it be someone else and not me?
JANEY
Well, yes, but I thought it was an actual disease of the brain.
HELEN
Anything that's out of the normal, they call a Disease these days, like all this neurodivergent talk as if it's special, whereas it's probably more normal than not. Neurodivergent, divergent, different, diverging from the norm. It doesn't discount people who've got a problem who are so divergent that society just will not make allowances for them. That's a problem. But if it's a —  you know tipping just one way or the other, the side of what supposedly what we're used to, some non-existent arbitrary average that is defined as normal. I don't think that's. Oh, I'm banging on here, rabbiting on.
JANEY
Yes. 'fraid so.
HELEN
Well you don’t have to agree with me. I know I don't know what I'm talking about. Let's face it. If anybody heard me? They'd say I was discriminating, and I'm really not. I just think it's it's become instead of young people saying, as a young person, and then we're expected to excuse their ignorance for whatever it is that's about to come out of their mouths. They're saying, "Well, I'm neuro. They say, "I'm neuro. They announce themselves, they introduces themselves saying, "I'm Neurodivergent, and and I just think, aren't we all really? Well, what do you think? Maybe it's just me...
JANEY
You don't think it's a thing?
HELEN
Oh no, it is a thing. That's what I'm saying. It is a thing. It absolutely is a thing, and we're all in it. Most of us, not just a few of us. It's a spectrum. We're all on it somewhere along the lines. I bet when I was younger, people would have loved to have labeled me as neurodivergent because I didn't think the way most people thought, I still don't. I have my way of thinking and doing stuff. It's gotten me to where I am, which is where? nowhere in particular, and that's pretty much how it was supposed to be. Not that I believe in fate either.
JANEY
No, you don't, do you?
HELEN
No, I don't. Fate is a concept that humans have invented for themselves to explain things. We're always looking for things to explain things instead of just going. That's the way it is. Let's deal with that. Let's work with that. Let's play with that. Not let's label it and define it and put it in a box. Everything's got to be in a box. It's got to be in a category. So to have to.
JANEY
Well, we kind of have to have categories, otherwise, how would you tell a dog from a cat?
HELEN
Ah, that's the old philosophical question, isn't it? Because they're both furry animals with four legs, two eyes that look forwards, and a nose and a mouth, sharp teeth, some sharper than others.
JANEY
Yes. and your point is?
HELEN
My point is?  Oh.  Do I have to have a actual point?

Janey
It would be helpful.
HELEN
Hmmm.  You got me.  I don’t think I have one.  I mean, I might have had one when I started, but I’ve no idea what it was. Gone. Into the mists of time.  Just another loose marble rattling round somewhere in my head.
JANEY
Oh Mum !!  You started off this conversation, talking about the Red Dots that the astronomers have recently discovered back in the far reaches of the Universe
HELEN
Oh yes!  And the huge, ginormous black holes that they reckon they turn into, but they can’t actually see them.
JANEY
Yes. And yet they believe that they exist.
HELEN
And so it goes, to quote Billy Joel, (SINGS) until they develop yet another fabulous telescope that can see even better, even further back towards the beginning of the Universe - so-called…
JANEY
So called, so you don’t think the Universe began?
HELEN
No I don’t mean that, I just think… "and so it goes, and so it goes, and you're the only one who know"
JANEY
Knows what?
HELEN
I have no idea. 
FLLOYD
And there you have it. This episode was written, performed and produced by me, Flloyd Kennedy, with music by John T LaBarbera from his album "In the Labyrinth", available on Bandcamp.  Thanks to the Fable and Folly network for their support, I hope you can take advantage of their sponsors, it all helps to keep the engine that keeps us going. You can also support me, help cover production costs and to compensate the wonderful voice actors who offer their talents from time to time. There are links on the website amIoldyet.com/donate. I've also put up a short (10 questions) survey, so that you can let me know what direction you'd like Helen to take as we go forward. Did I mention we've passed the 75,000 downloads figure? The survey is at amIoldyet.com/survey. Too easy! Thanks for listening. Stay safe.
HELEN
Oh, and I found a wee poem I wrote some time ago, to describe the podcast. Here it goes
Any time you're feeling low
Make a date to hear this show
It's a gentle comedy
Open hearted, horror free,
Looks at how a modern crone
Does her best to stick around
Cannot do it on her own
But family and friends abound
Younger folk and ancient gods
Come and go, and life goes on
And so does she, against the odds
Conclusions will not be foregone.