How to Get Moving

Chapter 3
Thera Cane Games: A Mind Unleashed

Over many months of treatment for my Repetitive Strain Injury (see HGM Chap 2) I  developed a variety of pained exclamations in response to my occupational therapists‘ pushing and prodding.
 
Often, I was unable to contain myself and would cry out whatever came into my head.
 
Rebekah and Marian were so impressed with my feedback, they hatched a plan to monetize it by creating a set of bobble head dolls that mimicked my outcries, and marketing them as a tool that:
1) OTs could use to assess pain levels, and
2) patients could use as inspirational comfort objects.
 
I said I’m in for 20% of the profits.

They said okay as long as I keep generating highly original outcries on a biweekly basis.
 
This was our prototype plan:

​My wife Hope, whose experience growing up in a small town made her an expert in public relations, wondered if high decibel expletive emissions might alienate staid suburban customers.
 
Of course, I didn’t listen.  We went ahead with testing, which went well until an unfortunate outcome with the 20+ pain bobble head.

​We decided to put the 20+ pain model on ice.
 
Rebekah and Marion decided I should do more therapy at home.

I warned them that I suffered from lifelong visual-motor incompetence syndrome.  But the more embarrassed and hesitant I became, the more they plied me with encouragement.
 
All too often their confidence was mistaken:

​It was humiliating to report my failures.
But nothing could shake their faith in my capacity to progress. 
 
As soon as I mastered a few elementary exercises, they rewarded me by prescribing new in-home activities employing simple props, like Thera Cane, an affordable deep pressure massaging tool.
 
For frequent travelers, Thera Cane Max dis-assembles in seconds for convenient fit in your carry-on.

The Thera Cane Owner’s Manual is replete with easy to follow, annotated drawings.

Easy for users who are not visual-motorically challenged.
For me, it was far from straightforward:

​At which point Hope, ever consistent in her promulgation of healthy restraint, said: 

​I didn’t want to disappoint her expectations, so I did what I usually do.  Got in deeper.
 
I told Rebekah and Marion I was determined to master equipment-assisted self-massage.
 
They recommended more intensive practice, so I purchased the portable Thera Cane Max, which I could pack when flying to visit my ancient Aunt Lenore in Orlando.
 
One evening I got so frustrated trying to replicate the pictures in the Thera Cane Owner’s Manual, I threw T.C. Max on the floor.  He landed with a clatter on top on T.C. Regular.  
 
Suddenly I got an impulse to try to pick up Max without disturbing Regular. It took some concentration, but it was such an engrossing challenge, I felt inspired.
 
I immediately ordered a multicolored assortment of Thera Canes.  When the boxes arrived, I tore them open and threw all the canes on the floor.
 
That was how I invented the game Pickup Canes, a large-scale version of the children’s classic, Pick-Up Sticks, which I found a lot more therapeutic than operationalizing the anatomical and mechanical complexities of deep pressure self-massage.

​From there my Thera Cane thinking really got rolling.
 
I dreamt of a new Thera Cane game, 16 Cane Pickup, based on the classic “game“ 52 Card Pickup, in which the dealer (plotting perpetrator) throws an entire deck in the air so the cards land strewn across the floor.  The other player (unsuspecting victim) must pick them up:
 
Classic 52 Card Pickup:

Frank’s 16 Thera Cane Pickup

​Hope interrupted my pleasant reverie with more words of wisdom:

​The next morning, I confessed to my analyst, Mel:

"Help me out.  I can’t stop making up new Thera Cane games. What a waste of time.  No doubt I’m defending myself against my terrible embarrassment about my abysmal visual-motor abilities, and my horrible discouragement about my slow progress with my arm rehab."
​

"Richard, you’ve really got something going with your Thera Cane games.  If you keep up this creative flow, nothing can stop your recovery."

"​You think my right upper extremity pain and dysfunction is all in my head, don’t you? And you call yourself a 21st century analyst!"

"Mind over matter."

"Mel, advancing age has fried your brain."

After my session I thought about this for a long time.
 
Indeed, I was having a lot of fun inventing Thera Cane games.
Just as I have writing a blog, which I hadn’t even imagined before my analysis. 

​I channeled  Pascal's Wager, which I learned about in Mr. Herold’s high school French class.
 
Blaise Pascal, the famous 17th century mathematician, scientist and philosopher, was riven with doubt about his belief in God.
 
Fortunately, his interest in gambling led him to found modern probability theory.
Which he then applied to his God problem.
 
Pascal reasoned:
 
“I can believe in God or not believe.”
 
“If I believe In God and live my life piously, and God exists, I will enjoy an afterlife of eternal bliss. (infinite gain).
If God doesn’t exist, I’ll have given up some pleasures for no gain. (finite loss).”
 
“If I don’t believe, I can indulge in some idle pleasures (finite gain), but I could miss out on an afterlife of eternal bliss. (infinite loss).”
 
Pascal decided to bet on God.

My analysis was already helping me in so many ways.
Why not bet on psychoanalysis?

No sooner had I opened my mind to this possibility than I felt a sudden creative
Impulse.
​
An idea for a feel-good rom-com I could submit to the Hallmark channel:

Hope got behind it immediately.

"Romance, Christmas and a challenging health condition. How can they turn it down?  Write up and submit it today!  Remember you obsessed so long about sending Final Accounting to the NYT Magazine, they published someone else’s piece about the untimely death of their accountant!"

What I love about Hope (among many other things) is that she can see the upside of my most far-fetched fantasies.
 
I started working in earnest on my Thera Cane screen play.
I began to believe that psychoanalysis could help me beat my RSI.
I felt better.
 
Can’t get enough of How to Get Moving?  The next installment, Chapter 4, West Coast Offense is coming soon to Square One and a Half on a browser near you!