Once upon a time, there was a PhD in dietetics. She had a great many friends and social media followers who would often ask her for advice on diet, but also on nutrition, fitness, and many other lifestyle and health-related topics.
She was always happy to help anyone who would listen and was widely regarded in her local community as ‘the go-to expert’ in these matters.
One day the PhD went for a big family picnic, and foolishly ate some wild mushrooms, picked and cooked by the host.
She felt fine, just a little dizzy perhaps, with some strange colours and shapes appearing in the corners of her eyes.
She decided she should go for a brisk walk with some of the children from her group, through the nearby forest of the picnic area, and hoped this would help pass the substance through her system.
Along the path, as the children played and chuckled, she noticed the strangest thing she’d ever seen approaching her.
It was about the size of 6-year-old walking towards her, on what seemed like legs, but weren’t.
It was, in fact, a huge piece of a jigsaw puzzle, and what had seemed like legs were simply two of its interlocking parts that would fit in somewhere else in a puzzle.
The children hadn’t noticed the surreal figure heading their way, and at that moment the PhD realized; ‘oh my god, it must be those mushrooms causing this hallucination’.
‘Hello’ said a magical voice in her head, ‘what are you?’, it asked.
‘Erm, I’m a Human’, said the PhD.
‘Oh I know all about humans’, said the jigsaw piece, ‘you’re what plays with us puzzles, aren’t you?’
‘Well yes we are, I mean I certainly did when I was younger, but….’
‘Will you play with me? I’ve no one to play me you see’, interrupted the jigsaw piece.
‘Well yes, of course, but where are the rest of the pieces like you?’
‘’Pieces’, you mean other jigsaws? My names Mr Jigsaw by the way, what’s yours?’
‘it’s Jane’
‘So please start playing me, Jane’
‘But your just one piece of a big picture Mr Jigsaw, and without the other pieces I’m afraid it won’t be much of a game for either of us, I’m sorry’
‘So how many more like me do you need?’
‘Sometimes there might be only a few pieces, and other times hundreds, or even thousands’
‘So what the hell am I’, the troubled Mr Jigsaw asked?
‘I’d say because your mainly what we call sky blue with little white fluffy bits in the corners, your most likely a part of the sky in a much bigger picture’
‘Am I important’?
‘Yes of course, without sky we humans couldn’t exist, and your also considered a thing of beauty’
‘So why won’t you play with me, don’t you like me?’ ‘Is it because I is blue?’
‘No, no, of course, I like you, and blue is my favourite colour, I’ve got lots of blue friends, it’s just that without the other pieces we can’t even get started’
‘So what your saying is, there’s no point to me, without perhaps a thousand other pieces’
‘Of course, there’s a point to you, we’re having this amazing conversation, we can go for a walk or listen to the woodland creatures, we just can’t make a jigsaw puzzle. I mean, what else do you like doing?’
‘Nothing. When I left Puzzle University, I went straight out and looked for someone to play with me’
‘And what have you found by doing this?’
‘That rabbits, mice, birds, hedgehogs, and every other woodland creature all enjoy playing, and completing me’
‘Completing you!’
‘Yes’
‘And what do they say you are when they’ve completed you?’
‘A beautiful sky with a little cloud, same as what you said’
‘Look, Mr Jigsaw, I can’t speak for all the woodland creatures, but we humans have a saying; ‘they’re blowing smoke up your arse’, I won’t go into it, but it means they’re telling you what you want to hear, rather than the truth, either that or they’re just too stupid to know the truth’
‘And what’s the truth, Jane?’
‘Well, maybe it’s that you should be doing something else with your life, at least till you find out where you fit in if you’ll pardon the pun. Can’t you go back to Puzzle university and learn to be the big picture?’
‘Fuck off, it took 6 years to get this far! Mind you, there was a lot of partying and backpacking in them 6 years, and I fucked a ton of them naughty Leggo chicks in Denmark, even fell in love with a Rubik’s cube in Hungary. But if I had to learn to become a big picture it might take 30 years’
‘Well it’s either that or resigning yourself to not pretending to be something when you’re clearly not qualified for the job’
‘And what’s a human’s job then?’
‘We all have different jobs, I, for example, am a PhD in Dietetics’
‘What’s that?’
‘Well it means I know an awful lot about a specific subject of human life, our diet, which is so important to our health’
‘So you know everything there is to know about health in humans?’
‘No, just a lot about the human diet.
I understand something that’s a part of something much more complicated, without necessarily knowing how the whole thing works, and we call this being a specialist’
‘Why don’t you need to know everything about human health to do your job?’
‘Because it would take 30 years at university, and there are lots of other people who already know the things I don’t know’
‘And do you know how much it is that you ‘don’t know’?’
‘No, no one knows what they don’t know, but we can all be assured there’s a great deal we don’t know’
‘So there may be a thousand important things that you don’t even know you don’t know, on top of the things your already aware you don’t know, that are all related to human health?’
‘Well there could be a million things since we humans are so complicated’
‘So how do you know you’re fully qualified, and not hurting other humans from things you don’t know to do, or not to do?’
‘Because we trust in our education system to train us in everything we’ll need to know for the greater good of helping mankind’
‘So you’re just like me then Jane?’
‘I don’t think so, how’d you figure that?’
‘Well, I know everything there is to know about being blue with a little bit of white in the corner, and I’m also an important part of something much bigger.
I obviously also got fucked at my university, and also hang out with animal retards here in the forest who all think I’m the complete picture, or ‘the shit’ as you humans would say, when in fact, according to you, I’m not qualified to do what I thought I was created to do, without a thousand other pieces, or even a million, if I were a part of a picture of the whole planet’
The PhD and Mr Jigsaw continued to walk quietly through the forest, both hoping the tension between them would soon vanish.
As they continued to walk together, they came upon a large steering wheel sitting on a dining table, and next to it was a graduate’s hat and a diploma scroll.
‘That’s really odd’ said the PhD.
‘Not really’ said the jigsaw piece, ‘that’s Colin, he always has lunch here. Apparently, his job takes people like you from A to B. I think he said he’s called a car! yeah, we were at the same University, though Colin’s course was just 4 years’
‘A car, are you winding me up!’ exclaimed the Ph.D., ‘he obviously doesn’t know he’s just a part of a car, the same way you were misinformed at your Puzzle University, this place is crazy. And his names Mr Colin Car, right?’
‘yeah, so you do know the guy?’
‘No I don’t, it was just a wild guess’
‘Holy shit’ said Mr Jigsaw, ‘well if you think Colin’s strange, your gonna fucking love his smarter brother from the future, that’s Kirk standing over there;
‘Are you fucking kidding me’ said the PhD, ‘I can’t wait till these hallucinogenic mushrooms wear off so I can get out of here’
‘What? Jane, there are no hallucinogenic mushrooms growing here in Bullshit Forrest’
‘Excuse me! Bullshit Forest’, said the PhD.
‘Yes, the magical bullshit forest, where everyone who’s ‘not the full ticket, or not fully qualified at anything’, whatever that is, is sent when they die’
‘I assure you I’m not dead and am a highly respected, intelligent, PhD, I’ll have you know’
‘Well that’s as maybe love, and we all thought the same thing when we first arrived here. But from what you’ve told me you’re certainly both superbly underqualified to give advice on human health, and most welcome to live here, forever’
The End.
PS
Don’t know what mushrooms I had in my Omelette this morning that prompted me to write that the way I did, but there is a woman PhD in dietetics that pisses me off no end at my local gym.
The juice bar and its seating area at the said gym are like a fucking waiting room for idiots clamouring to consult the guru Ph.D., in spite of her fat arse and thunder thighs.
I’ve so far heard bullshit advice from her on diet, nutrition, exercise, weight management and so on, but last night I overheard her moonlighting in dermatology.
In ‘Big Picture Terms’ she’s fucking clueless, yet as usual, she only needs to know just a bit more on any given subject than the mongoloids who consult her.
She is absolutely like Mr Jigsaw in my story above, both in the sense of ‘believing’ she’s god’s ‘complete’ answer to the layperson, and in the way her bullshit academic course propagated that belief.
The education system gets the bullshit ball rolling as it were, the student starts to believe in the hype, and the public equally buys into it. Then what?
Hey presto, the worlds fucked, infertile, tragically unfit, and supremely unhealthy.
Watch out for your local ‘Mr Jigsaw’ or ‘Jane the PhD’, dishing out free shit advice at a coffee shop or gym near you.
Be well and thanks for visiting Blunt Coach today.
Andy.
