Training Wheels

I completed my Master’s degree at Liberty University through an off-campus modality. Back in the “dinosaur days,” and before students had access to online coursework, we viewed video tapes which contained our professors’ lectures, and completed our course tests under the supervision of a local person appointed and anointed to administer them. During the process of completing our off-campus degree programs, we were required to attend a couple of on-campus modular courses which lasted a week.

At this writing, Readers, I don’t recall the title of the course in which I was enrolled at the time, but I do recall another counseling student by the name of Randy. (His last name escapes me now, though we kept in touch for a while after graduation.)

We were given an assignment to break up into two person “groups” one day. This would be the first time ever to practice our eventual “stock in trade.” We were allowed to bring up any issue to the opposite student and elaborate, and then it became their turn to encourage, guide or advise the initial student.

Randy shared something with me in relation to his needs or issues, and I followed up with some sage advice, or at least some ad-lib wisdom, (or lack thereof.) Now it was my turn to “play the client.”

“Randy, I never shared this with anyone other than my wife. But I was born in the Congo. My parents were missionaries there, and they sent me away to an international boarding school, a couple hundred miles away. While I was at school, there was an uprising by a particular tribe there which had a terrible reputation for violence. Dad and Mom were taken for ransom. My parents’ denominational leaders received a couple of letters written by my dad while he and my mom were being held hostage. Daddy begged them to pay the $200,000 ransom. Well, the missionary board they worked under had a policy that, should missionaries ever be taken hostage, a ransom would never be paid, since payments only encouraged further hostage taking. The Congolese National Army sent hundreds of troops into the jungle to find and rescue my parents,… but they were never found. (I began to tear up.) Randy, … I never saw my parents again.”

My “counselor” sat there silent, with beads of sweat forming on his brow. And then he shook his head from side to side, as if musing how to respond to such a heinous memory.

I continued my unfinished story.

“Well, my friend, I’ve often thought about my parents, whether they had been tortured, if they were dead, or still alive out there somewhere. Not a day went by that I didn’t think of them, and you know, I wondered. Then a couple months ago, I was at my local flea market. I was looking through the odds and ends at this booth, and then that one. So, I walk up to this one really exotic booth. I mean it had stuff from different parts of the world. And then I see the wierdest stuff hanging from these strings attached to a display. Shrunken heads. There were maybe 12 or 15 of them. Now, this really got my attention. It’s not every day you see authentic shrunken heads. I considered buying one, ‘cause I was sure it would look really cool in my future counseling office. I was making a decision which one to buy when I noticed that two of the heads looked very familiar. And then I realized why. Randy, I was looking into the faces of my… parents! I fainted right there on the spot.”

Randy’s mouth was hanging down to his chest by this time. His eyes were transfixed. His respiration was hardly negligible. He looked like a mannequin.

I continued.

“Well, my compatriot, after another customer managed to get me to my feet, I decided then and there that my parents weren’t going to be a part of that freak show, and not any ‘Joe Blow’ was going to purchase their heads. Randy, I bought them. I know it must seem peculiar, but I treasure them. I haven’t made up my mind whether to make some sort of shrine for them at home, or whether to hold a memorial service and invite some of my relatives and their old missionary friends.”

“I’d really like some help with this decision. What do you think I should do?”

As Randy attempted to regain his composure, and “hemmed and hawed” around, the morbid look on my face quickly disappeared, and I almost shouted...

“GOTCHA!!!”

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 29, Copyright pending

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