I got really tired of always answering questions from that head shrinker. He’d never say anything about himself. All he wanted to do was say things like “That’s interesting. How did that make you feel?”

More than anything else, it seemed like he kept asking about my mom and dad. Over and over and over again. I wouldn’t talk much about it, so he’d just look through his file and make notes and stuff. He kept on saying that a feller’s brain is like an onion, and you got to keep peeling away at the layers until you get to what’s underneath.

I never told him, but I thought that was the dumbest thing in the world to say. When you peel away the layers of an onion, all you got is more layers under it, and it’s mostly the same as the first layer And when you get done with them, you got even more after that. And when you finally get all the layers done, all you got left is an empty hand and maybe some snot coming out of your nose and a tear or two. I ain’t about to cry in front of a feller like him, although I’d pick my nose when he wasn’t looking and wipe it under his couch.

Nope, your brain is mostly just a big scab. You keep picking at it and it’s just going to start bleeding again, and then you’re right back where you started from. If psychiatrists poking around into all the things you decided to stop thinking about is such a good thing, then why don’t monkeys and hamsters have little animal psychiatrists too? You’d think all them critters probably got some of that fancy shrinker’s “abandomint issues.”

Just look at my dog. Roger’s mom was dead before he was even born. But if there was a psychiatrist who could talk dog, he wouldn’t get nothing out of Roger.

“Roger, how you feel about your dead mom?” he’d ask. “Roger, quit licking your privates and tell me how it makes you feel. Roger. Roger, how come you start humping on that couch every time I ask about that?”

And it wouldn’t be like Roger meant nothing by it. He just happens to like licking himself or going to town on a nice piece of furniture. He’s just a dog. What do you expect?

Dogs don’t know from onions, but they know how to handle scabs. You lick them a little and maybe sniff at it, but ain’t no way they’re going to just rip it off and watch it start bleeding all over again.

Even when they throw up they eat up all the barf before anyone’s likely to step in it.

Not psychiatrists, though. Nope. Not only do they want to step in it, they want to hold it in their hands close to their face, give it a good hard sniff and maybe stick a finger in it and give the whole world a taste off their finger.

Ain’t no reason to do that.