Psychodrama

“I see you working in a day care or nursery school but you aren’t doing direct care work. You must be a director or an administrator.”

A psychic prophesized my occupation before I had even declared a major in college. I dismissed the illogical claim to pedestrian fame and the prediction stayed in my rearview mirror. I didn’t revisit the notion until I was middle aged. On an average Wednesday morning, the 25 year old trace memory surfaced like a divining rod of purpose.

Let me explain how. My work location has not changed in the last thirteen years. It is a noisy day program of non-ambulatory, non-verbal developmentally disabled clients. My employer rents space for me to have a shell of a satellite office in this special needs day program. As the lone social worker, I oversee clients who attend this day program. It is the same rickety foam partitions forming the walls of my office cubicle, the same fluorescent light covers brimming overhead with trapped dead bees, and the customary paper clips and staples underneath my pacing feet. For all of its flaws and lack of amenities, it is where I conduct business. The drab office is my home away from home. It is where I belong and from where I will probably retire.

“Joe Tornatore.” I answered the phone for the ten thousandth time.

There was a deliberate pause. “Joe, it sounds like you are working in a nursery school.”

“Can you hold on a minute?” I asked the caller.

What did the caller just say? Where have I heard those words before? As I took in the familiar sights and sounds of the day room, the psychic’s quarter of a century old prediction rang true with the lifted weight of a startling revelation. Forget the last 13 years I have worked here without changing jobs and not coming to the same conclusion. Life happens on a subconscious level and it often doesn’t bubble to the surface right away. So for the very first time, I listened with the mind’s eye of that gifted psychic.

An interactive toy spit out a singy-songy nursery rhyme. I heard the non-harmonious blend of vocalizations. Amidst cooing, cackles, and crying sounds from mouths yearning to be fed and bottoms stirring to be changed, I remembered the psychic’s prediction verbatim. Humm…where I work cannot be distinguished from a day care center. Oh My God! That psychic was right!