One of the traditions in the alt.callahans virtual bar is to throw peanuts at the punsters. This one is by Stark Night (aka Sean Roberts).
Starknight looks up with an innocent expression on his face. “Me? Throw peanuts? I would never do such a thing – ask anyone here!”
He looks around. “OK, scratch that thought… Umm, I guess I need to follow up, huh?” Scratching his head, he wanders over to the bar and gets a refill (the Patrons recognize this as a stall – the horse is what gives it away), then turns and faces the crowd.
“Well, this tale takes place somewhat later than Alan’s (story); I hope no-one objects to the time-switch. A few years ago, I chanced to undergo a nervous breakdown and placed myself under the care of a psychiatrist. The reason being that I had come to consider myself to be somewhat less than human, due to being bounced around by life’s vicissitudes… it seemed that I was constantly being struck by problems.
“The psychiatrist thought it necessary for a complete recovery that I be able to articulate exactly *what* non-human object I felt like, but I wasn’t really cognizant of what that object was – I just knew I felt like something that got knocked down often, and had the feeling it had something to do with a game. I asked if there was anything he could do to make me remember, or possibly to make me forget the whole thing, and we spent some time discussing options – hypnotherapy, drugs, sensory deprivation… we even discussed electro-shock. I wasn’t sure any of these things would help, but we did talk about them… At length, we decided to start with hypnosis and work our way through the list.
“Well, hypnosis failed miserably – I’m not that trusting – and the various drugs he used to break down my resistance merely put me to sleep, so we began to try sensory deprivation… and a breakthrough occurred. I still wasn’t sure what I felt like, but I was sure it had to do with a sport played in England… so we sat down and looked at various tapes of English sports, and I realized I felt much like the backstop in cricket! The psychiatrist was relieved that we had figured this out before applying electricity to my head, and commented:
“No EST for the wicket!”