Tom, Dick and Harry

Richard Delman
Sep 5, 2018 · 3 min read

Tom, Dick and Harry: A cautionary tale

Don’t call me Dick. For our purposes here, the other two guys are named Tom and Harry, so you can call me Ishmael if you like. What I want to talk about today is a conundrum: how a man can let another guy know that their relationship needs to change, i.e., it needs to end. A difficult situation, one that I believe women do better than men.

Tom was a guy who was divorced by a long-time friend of mine because he was “needy,” in her view. I had surgery on my lumbar spine some years ago. I came home from the hospital with severe pain that held me in its grip for months. They gave me the drug that Lenny Bruce used to off himself. (Anybody here old enough to remember Lenny?) The first time I saw Tom after the surgery was about four months down the line. I was still in pain, but it was manageable enough that I could see friends, go out to lunch, like that. To the restaurant came Tom, holding a cardboard box stuffed with objects. I didn’t express curiosity, as it was obvious that Tom was going to play show and tell, at some length. We proceeded to examine his pottery projects for the next ninety minutes. He asked not one question about how I was doing, or how the surgery had gone, or how the Dilaudid worked. Honestly, it was as if I were one giant ear.

When I drove home, I was a little stunned. We had known each other for twenty years. Did Tom really not give a tinker’s dam about this huge thing I had just gone through? WTF? So, go ahead and shoot darts at me, the next fifteen times he called, I failed to answer or to respond. Just that. Can you tell me a doable better thing, given the sad level of narcissism I was facing? Be specific. You may call me a jerk, even though I asked you to call me Ishmael.

Harry was a guy that I shared an office with for over a decade. I am a fairly neat person, but not pathologically compulsive. Harry had a therapist’s chair that his sister had given him, at a time when it should rightfully have been taken to the dump. Harry, however, was a truly cheap SOB, so he sat in the chair for a day per week even though it was so ratty that you could see the plastic material underneath the plastic (yuccck). I had to try not to see the damned thing three days a week. My colleagues tried talking to him, which was as effective as pissing in the wind. He would listen and do nothing. They gave up. I got mad. I decided that the only way to get him to buy a new chair was to treat him like a very bad child, not my own. Maybe a kid in juvie for a mild homicide. So I called him and left on his voicemail a litany of his faults. I raised my voice, you could say. I told him that he needed to grow up. God forbid! He immediately went crying to my two colleagues, who were women, and hid behind their nonexistent skirts. One of them came to me and told me about it. I let her know that their method had failed, and that the only way to solve the problem was to do exactly what I did. And, lo and behold, it worked. Within a month or so he had the trash hauled out and replaced it with a brand new cheap therapist’s chair. My question to you again is: how could I have handled that situation better? Be real. Calmly talking to him had failed a number of times. Help me out here. Just don’t call me Dick.

    Richard Delman

    Written by

    69 year old married clinical and forensic psychologist. Sons 28 and 25. Began writing in a creative way about a month ago. Having some fun.