TA

It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties--you know, just to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to another and soon I was more than just a social thinker. I began to think alone--"to relax" I told myself--but I knew it wasn't true.

Thinking became more and more important to me. Finally, I was thinking all the time: it had taken over my life. That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.

I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself. I began to avoid friends at lunch time so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"

One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, I'm gonna have to let you go."

This gave me even more to think about.

I went home early after my conversation with the boss.

"Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking--"

"I know you've been thinking!" she said, "And I want a divorce!"

"But Honey, surely it's not that serious."

"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as unemployed intellectuals. And unemployed intellectuals are broke. So if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!"

"That's a faulty syllogism," I said.

She exploded in tears of rage and frustration but I was in no mood at all to deal with non-Aristotelian melodrama.

"I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.

I headed for the library in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with Bach's Second Violin Concerto on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors: they wouldn't open. The library was closed. To this day, I believe that an a priori deist hologram was looking out for me that night.

As I sank to the ground clawing at the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster on the wall caught my eye: "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?"

You probably recognize that line. It comes from Thinker's Anonymous.

Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting.

At each meeting we watch an episode of American Idol. Then we discuss the show and especially the commercials and how they help us through our travails. Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.

I still have my job and things are a lot better at home.

Life just seemed...easier somehow as soon as I stopped thinking. I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me. Today I registered to vote Republican.

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