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Week 17.4 My Happy Place
Week 17.4
Topic: My Happy Place
THE PILL
Ozzie stood on his balcony, staring at the sunset over the Pacific, the waves crashing against the beach below, sipping some overly expensive wine from a needlessly costly glass. His regular monthly party, large and noisy, was going on in the house behind him.
“They don’t know it, but it’s the last,” he thought, before throwing some pills over the railing. “It was great while it lasted.”
He picked up his phone and started scrolling through the pictures until his third grade school photograph stared at him, with his bad haircut, braces, forced smile and downward eyes. He never knew whether to despise or cherish this picture; either way, the memories hurt. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to delete it.
“I wouldn’t be me without him,” Ozzie thought, his eyes beginning to tear, finishing his glass of wine. He dreaded going back.
There had never been anything particularly wrong with Oswald Michaels as a child, but never anything particularly right, either. In a sea of Jennifers, Jasons, Michelles, and Davids, Oswald had stood out; he had liked his middle name, John, but he had been doomed in the first grade when other kids had heard his mother say, “Remember Ozzie, Mommy loves you.”
“Kids want cool names,” Ozzie thought, leaning against the balcony rail, “not weird ones.”
As a young child, he had been short, but even after he grew, he had still been bad at sports, the ultimate sin for boys. He had always been picked last, but he would have preferred not to be picked at all. In fifth grade PE, the teacher had sent him off to play with the girls, which had only made life worse.
Ozzie had never dressed right. Shaking his head, he remembered the year his mother had sent him to school in a pair of orange corduroy pants because she had liked the color and the fabric was soft. He had begged her to buy jeans, but it hadn’t mattered. After he had spilled paint on them, he had been relieved when she had replaced them with jeans, until he got to school.
“Ozzie’s wearing Wranglers!” Steve Johansson had said. “Those are girls’ jeans!”
Ozzie had been humiliated. He hadn’t known that boys only wore Levi’s, and of course his mother hadn’t known. Money had been tight, and they hadn’t been able to replace them, so he’d had to wear them the rest of the school year.
His hair had been short when the other boys’ hair had been long and long when it should have been short. And then the braces. And the pimples.
Of course, no one had wanted to eat lunch with him. His table had been called the island of misfit boys. A few others had sat there, and if there had been no friendship, at least there had been solace.
Underlying it all had been Ozzie’s intense shyness.
“I would always have been shy,” he thought, getting ready to rejoin the party. “But the way they treated me sure didn’t help.”
His intelligence hadn’t helped either, even after he’d finally learned to slouch in his chair and answer every question with “I dunno.”
Ozzie had survived school, but his difficulties hadn’t stopped. His shyness had continued in college, driving him underground. He had loved the basement biochemistry lab, working on his major in preparation for medical school. Any place by himself had made him happy.
He’d had one desire: to rid himself of his shyness. “If a pill can treat depression, why not shyness,” he had dreamed. He had planned one day to invent one.
Four years of college, six years of medical school, another four to become a board-certified psychiatrist, and Ozzie had been hired to help develop new drugs for the psychiatric field by PsyChem. Along the way, his shyness had diminished but it had never gone away. He had never forgotten young Ozzie.
Ozzie had worked on new drugs for depression, psychosis, and other problems, but he had never been able to convince his superiors that shyness could be treated with drugs.
“If they won’t let me try,” Ozzie had thought, “I’ll do it on my own.” Back to the basement he had gone, this time at PsyChem, where he had worked on his own time to create his shyness pill.
It had been a daunting task, but he had persevered. Over the years, he had developed various compounds, but they had either killed the test rats or made them vicious and aggressive. Some had even eaten each other.
“The self-confidence is good,” Ozzie had thought, “but not the cannibalism.”
It had also been difficult to tell which rats were shy, so he had never been certain of his results.
After several years of late nights and weekends, he had thought he finally had the right formula. It hadn’t killed any rats and they hadn’t eaten each other.
“My data’s too thin for human trials,” Ozzie had thought, “and PsyChem won’t fund them anyway.”
He had had only one solution: test the drug on himself. There had been a hundred reasons why this was had been banned and only one reason to go forward.
“I have no other choice,” Ozzie had thought, “I can’t give up now.”
The next morning, he had swallowed a pill. It had been a very low dose. Nothing had happened.
“No aggression, but no change in my shyness,” Ozzie had thought. “And I don’t feel like eating anyone – that’s a good sign.”
Each week for a month he had gradually increased the amount. Finally, he had felt different. He hadn’t avoided looking at a very pretty colleague, one he could barely talk to. The next day, he’d been joking with her in the break room, and the day after that, she’d agreed to go out to dinner with him.
He had got a haircut and some new clothes, and when Mary had opened her door, he’d looked good and he’d known it. They’d had a great time at dinner and had made plans to see each other again. The night had ended in a romantic kiss, then Ozzie had walked away, knowing that Mary had still been looking at him. He hadn’t looked back, just smiled.
It had taken some time for Ozzie to find the right dose. Too much, and every night he’d had a new babe on each arm; not enough, and he’d had trouble standing up to his supervisor. People had noticed the changes and a lively betting pool had started as to which Ozzie would show up for work. One day he’d driven up in a sleek red Ferrari instead of his old gray Prius, and everyone had lost.
After about a month, Ozzie had figured out the right dose. He’d been warm and friendly, but not obnoxious and loud. Everyone had liked him, and he’d liked everybody, except his supervisor. The betting pool had disbanded because he was now the same every day.
“I can’t tell anyone about the pill,” he’d thought, “not now. I’ll wait a year and see if any side effects develop.”
The new Ozzie had thrown himself into his work and his life. He’d moved into an expensive ocean-view apartment, and he’d made friends. Lots of friends. Ozzie had become outgoing, gregarious, and everyone had liked him, especially women.
“He’s so genuine,” he’d heard one woman say at the office. Ozzie hadn’t blushed.
For six months, life had been wonderful. It had all been exciting and new. But Ozzie had gradually noticed something different.
“I feel flat,” he’d often thought, “like there’s no spice in my food. I need to make some changes.”
New Ozzie had become dangerous Ozzie. He’d taken up rock climbing, then paragliding. Speeding in his Ferrari had become a way of life and paying for tickets was just another entertainment expense.
He’d made more friends among the thrill-seeking adrenaline junkies, and that had worked, for a while.
But even thrill-seeking had no longer masked his emptiness. The world had become a dreary place, and it got darker. He had gone through the motions, including the parties, but eventually it had all become too much.
“Classic depression,” he had told himself, so he had tried anti-depressants until it had become clear that this did not help.
Out on his balcony, with the party noisy behind him, he knew what he had to do, what he had struggled to avoid.
“I’ve got to stop taking my shyness pills,” he thought despondently, as he poured them off the balcony and into the ocean below.
Gradually, Ozzie’s depression lifted, but his shyness returned. His friends, missing the dynamic, fun-loving Ozzie, gradually drifted away.
Now that he had experienced life without his shyness, Ozzie knew that he had to keep going.
“I know I’ve got the basic formula,” he thought, as he headed back to the lab. “I’ve just got to work out a few details.”
All in all, Ozzie considered this a positive experience. He had a Ferrari and a beautiful home with an ocean view. And unlike some of his test rats, he hadn’t killed anyone or tried to eat his friends.
“Could have been worse,” he thought. “Someday I’ll get it right, and new Ozzie will be back!”
It took a few years, but one day his co-workers started betting again on which Ozzie would show up for work. One day they stopped, and Ozzie was happy.
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GREAT work.
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orange corduroy pants
The 70s! An opportunity to torture so many with the chance to be MORE wrong in a world of fashion wrongs. And now those colored pants are back. /o\
“The self-confidence is good,” Ozzie had thought, “but not the cannibalism.”
Hahahaha! And also, ewwwww.
He’d been warm and friendly, but not obnoxious and loud.
Such a tightrope of reality for so many of us. You don't want to seem sullen or crabby (on one end of the scale), and you don't want to be overbearing on the other! I envy people who easily live in that middle space. :)
I would hate to find the cure for such a common problem, and then have it get out of whack and turn into thrill-seeking madness. I'm glad he found a good version in the end.
And I like the workplace bets on which Ozzie he'll become. :)
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