Column:

Oedipus' mother comes for a CAT scan

By Charles Austin

Published Oct. 9, 2007

This past summer, I worked by transporting patients in a hospital. This is a condensed version of something I wrote after a particularly bizarre encounter:

Everyone has seen his or her fair share of overprotective moms, but the overprotective son is a rare breed. But I stumbled across one such son while transporting a patient from her room to get a CAT scan. Upon entering the woman's room, I was greeted by her son. I pegged him as maybe 22 years old.

As he introduced himself, he shook my hand and asked for my name. I gave it to him, unaware at this point that he would continue to ask for the name of every man, woman and child who crossed his path.

This son and his mom are the kind of people who will ask a stranger for his or her name and then subsequently use that name in any context possible.

Mere seconds after introducing myself, the mother addressed me as "John" multiple times. It was a forgivable mistake though. I was, after all, a stranger, and they were doing their best to treat me as a friend. I cannot say I condone this kind of faux-friendly behavior, but I figured it was forgivable.

If the son initially seemed too friendly with me, it was nothing compared to how he was with his mother. This was evident when he insisted on padding her wheelchair with pillows but perhaps infinitely more so when his mother had to use the bathroom.

Now, this woman was having back trouble, thus the necessity of the wheelchair, but she could easily walk by herself if need be. But her son insisted on helping his mother to the bathroom.

"Looks like the seat is a bit lower than you're used to," I heard him say as the door shut behind them.

I expected to see him come right back out, but, before long, I heard a toilet flush and I intuitively figured at this point that he had probably depressed the toilet's silvery lever on his mother's behalf.

Our instantaneous, forced false friendship was forgivable, but this familial bathroom break bordered on Oedipus levels of oddity.

He took to stroking his mother's hair when she was ready to begin her CAT scan, and he took to calling me "George" soon thereafter.

This was a family who amplified all its relationships by at least one degree of familiarity. Strangers became friends, mothers became lovers and I can only imagine that if the son has a girlfriend, she is no less revered than a god. Not only is this awkward, but it is insulting to most people involved. Maybe his girlfriend enjoys dining on nectar and ambrosia nightly, but his overbearing behavior was clearly demeaning to his mother's ability to take care of herself, and the fact that he could not remember my name only made me wonder why he ever asked for it in the first place.

The son and his mother seemed to be under the impression that being extremely polite equates to being compassionate, when in fact it only equates to being fake and insincere. Society does not expect you to treat strangers as anything other than strangers so long as you treat them with a little genuine compassion.

I am afraid this son and his mother unwittingly ventured into a world that values manners over compassion and friendliness over honesty. Society at large does not expect this from you. Maybe if people would just drop these false pretenses and be themselves, I could be myself instead of "John" or "George."

cran7d@mizzou.edu