The 1st story on my book, exclusively shared here on beige.party
The psychologist with the bearded dragon pet
One of the first people I interacted with in my current instance of the mastodon social network was someone who identify as a clinical psychologist. She also says that she has a bearded dragon (also called a ‘beardie’) at home as a pet, and even created an account for the animal on the social network.
It turns out that I have a best friend from high school, with whom I got back in touch after my university years. She is extremely funny, in fact so funny that she is often invited to perform in stand-up comedy shows. And that’s a good thing because otherwise she wouldn’t be able to put up with her husband, who is a psychiatrist in a hospital for the mentally ill. I seldom visit them because the man has the house full of ‘perpetual’ motion toys. When he leaves for work she stops them all, when he gets home from work he sets them all in motion. On the weekend, she either persuades him to go out with her or, if he insists on staying at home, she spends the day out with her friends, shopping or whatever.
On one of these weekends he didn’t want to go out we went for tea together, as we do from time to time. I told her about the psychologist with the bearded dragon.
“And the ‘beardie’ is a female,” I added laughing.
“You’re making that up because you know I capitalise on those kinds of stories for my stand-up comedy act, don’t you?”
“Cross my heart it’s true.”
“Well, you don’t usually lie, I believe you. And come to think of it, that’s the sort of thing a psycho… a psycho… a psychologist would have as a pet.”
I couldn’t hold back a loud laugh and everyone in the room stared at us.



