If you read "Attack of the killer cliches" here on Monday, you witnessed the power of words to drive us crazy.  Here's a short story, a cautionary tale, I wrote on the subject.

I read "Obsession" at the Hawaii Book & Music Festival a few years ago. Just one note on this story—yes, it's important to care about language, but be careful that it doesn't take over your life. There, you've been warned.

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“Obsession”

“Just one more patient to show you,” Doctor Farley said. “I saved him for last.”

I followed the doctor down the hall. He was eager to leave, to move on to Seattle and a bigger job, leaving the patients of the small mental hospital to my care. His office was all boxes when I showed up that Friday morning, ready to begin my new life in Hawaii, a long way from the dry west Texas town where I started. Farley told me I was in the honeymoon stage, a newcomer to paradise, charmed by the magic of the islands. Indeed, there was much to charm me. Even the hospital, where I would be spending so much time, was nestled at the foot of the majestic Koolau mountains, facing out on the blue Pacific. Gentle trades were blowing that sunny morning, providing the perfect setting for my romantic first week on Oahu.

“Here we are,” Farley said, stopping in front of a door at the end of the hallway. “Take a look inside.”

“Who’s this?” I asked.

“Look for yourself,” he said, “then you tell me.”

The man inside was seated at a small corner desk, writing feverishly. Through the small window in the door I saw only the back of his head and his left arm moving as he wrote. Then I noticed the walls.

“This is his writing?”

“All his,” Farley said.

“It’s the same thing, over and over,” I said.

“On one wall, yes, but look at the opposite wall.”

I took a step and looked to my right. I saw drawings, arrows, a more complex mural of sorts. Then I looked back to my left.

“On Maui,” I read. “That’s all it says, hundreds of times. What’s the importance of Maui?”

“Not Maui,” Farley said. “It’s the ‘on’ part. Notice how he’s underlined it.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Read the wall in the back.”

“The writing is crossed out,” I said. “Wait, I can make it out now. He’s written ‘in Maui’ and crossed it out.”

“That’s his obsession,” Farley said. “Every time he reads or hears somebody say he’s going to be ‘in Maui’ or something happened ‘in Maui,’ he explodes.”

“I see. ‘On Maui’ is correct, I guess. It is an island.”

“Look at the drawings now,” Farley said.

“Small islands,” I said, “all shaped like Maui. And he’s drawn stick people on the islands.”

“Yes,” Farley said, “on the islands, not in them. And the arrows pointing to the people.”

“That back corner is different,” I said.

“That’s the Gilligan corner. Gilligan’s island, over and over. If you look closely you can see Gilligan himself, on his island.”

“Amazing,” I said. “And that’s why he’s in here?”

“That’s it,” Farley said. “Apparently it started out as a minor annoyance, a mere grammatical concern. Then he began to protest, complaining to friends, then to strangers, then letters to the editor and to radio and TV stations, anyone who used ‘in Maui.’ It took over his life, a one-man crusade. He lost his friends. Then he lost his job. Finally his family abandoned him. He had papered all the walls of his home with examples of the ‘in Maui’ crimes. He began to preach on street corners. That’s when he landed here.”

“Sad story,” I said.

“Except he’s very happy here. He has time to devote to his cause. Then there are the other patients.”

I heard shouts from the other end of the building.

“What’s that?”

“Must be the rec room,” Farley said. “Hear that? They’re yelling ‘on Maui, on Maui, on Maui.’ Someone on TV must have committed the great sin again.”

“So he’s converted the other patients.”

“Totally,” Farley said. “They all look up to him. When his letters to the editor are printed, they read them aloud and celebrate. It may be good for them. Who knows?”

“Fascinating. Maybe I can help him.”

“Good luck,” Farley said. “I gave up on him long ago. He’s harmless.”

“What did he do before?”

“High school English teacher,” Farley said. “Naturally he was concerned about the grammatical laxness around him. But it got to the point where he would spend the class time lecturing about ‘on Maui.’ His students all learned that lesson quite well, but not much else. He’s better off here.”

Doctor Farley walked back down the hall. The shouts of the other patients in the rec room had died away. The building was quiet again.

“We all have our obsessions,” I said as we walked toward the admin building. I hustled to keep up with Farley.

“I guess,” Farley said. The subject did not interest him. He had boxes to pack and a plane waiting.

“What’s your obsession?” I asked.

“Mine? Let me think. Nothing to do with grammar, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t throw my life away over a preposition. I guess I have a thing about turning off lights. I always check when I leave the house.”

“Compulsive?”

“Oh no, I just check once, but I always check. I’m afraid it’s not much of an obsession, more a case of being economical.”

“Quite sane,” I said.

“Or dull,” Farley said. “How about you? What’s your obsession? You said everyone has one.”

By then we were back in the doctor’s office. Farley sat behind his desk, soon to be my desk. I found a chair squeezed between cardboard boxes and sat there, not enough room to cross my legs.

“My obsession?” I said. “That’s easy. I get songs stuck in my head. The only way I can deal with it is to change the tune, but it’s not easy. I spent a whole year with We Will Rock You playing inside.”

“Ah yes, earworms,” Farley said. “A common obsession, I believe. What’s playing these days?”

“Crazy,” I said. “The Willie Nelson song.”

“How appropriate.”

I laughed. “It’s one of the better songs I’ve been plagued with. Much better than the Kit-Kat candy bar jingle it replaced. But it’s getting old. After a while it becomes a bunch of nonsense.” I tapped the side of my head with an index finger, as if the tapping might change the record.

“Well,” Farley said, “I’d love to continue this discussion, but I have more books to pack. I wish you luck. I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

I said my thanks and goodbye and headed back to my car. What I should have done was just keep walking, back the car out, and drive home. There was nothing more I could do that day. I would have the rest of the day and the weekend to explore my new island and then report to work on Monday morning. That’s what I should have done. What I did, however, was look over my shoulder at the building I had just toured. Then I turned and walked back, then down the hall to that room at the end. What was I thinking? What did I expect to see? Whatever was there could wait.

Before I reached the room at the end of the hallway I could hear music. It sounded like a television tune, but I knew there was no TV in the room. At last I reached the obsession chamber and looked inside. The patient might have seen me this time, but he didn’t react. He was too busy dancing merrily about the room, his arms waving in the air, like Woody Allen in Play It Again, Sam. The music, from a small CD player on the desk, was something I had heard before, years ago. It was the opening song from Gilligan’s Island, naming everyone from the Skipper to Mary Ann to the Professor to Gilligan. When the song reached the closing line about “here on Gilligan’s isle,” the patient shouted the words, loudest of course with the word ‘on.’”

I watched him dance until the song ended. Then he pushed a button on the CD player, and danced again to the same song. On one of the walls, the one with the drawings, I saw something moving. It was a small green lizard, traveling from one tiny island to another. The lizard was on those islands, of course, not in any of them. And there before me, in that strange room in a small mental hospital between the green volcanic mountains and the endless blue sea, I saw a happy man. Would I want to cure him? Would I want to send him back to a world that was careless about grammar, that couldn’t tell a preposition from a donut?

I stayed too long, I know, watching the patient dance his obsession. After the song played a fifth time he returned to his desk to write some more. I turned away and walked out into the sunshine. As I watched the tops of the palm trees dancing joyfully in the wind, I considered my great fortune to have moved to this beautiful place, to be on this island.

Then, innocently enough, I began to hum the tune from Gilligan’s Island. It’s a cheerful song, in spite of the unfortunate circumstances of the Minnow’s passengers and crew. I remember those shows as carefree, good for a laugh or two. I never worried about the fate of Gilligan and his friends. As I drove away from the hospital, I was whistling the tune. Then the tune took over, playing in my head all that day and on through the night as a soundtrack to my dreams. In one dream I was stranded on that famous island with Gilligan. I found much to keep me occupied. I analyzed the behavior of the Minnow’s passengers and crew and pursued the movie star, although without success. In another dream I saw myself with a large box of crayons, drawing on the walls of my new office.

The Gilligan song was still playing that Monday morning as I drove to the hospital. It had me. I sang it in the car, making up new words when I couldn’t remember the actual ones. At the end of the song, each time, I found myself shouting out the part about “on Gilligan’s isle.”

It’s only a preposition. In or on. A difference of one letter. There are more important issues in life. At the moment, however, it had my full attention. Once I settled into my new office I would try out my computer, maybe write a letter to the editor. Newcomer that I was, I still had something important to say, something that people needed to hear.

I flipped on the car radio, just in time to hear a deejay announce he would be “in Maui” the following week. The word grated on my ear. In Maui indeed! Was he going to be in the crater at the top of Haleakala? He could be in Lahaina or in Wailuku, with my blessings, but I would bet my life that he was going to be on Maui. I made a mental note of the radio guy’s name. Some crimes should not go unpunished.

Tags: Hawaii Book & Music Festival, Obsession

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