I'm Back

I knew I should have taken the digital camera. Normally, I take it everywhere--you never know, right? But today I didn't think anything noteworthy would present itself since I'd be on the inside of a building in the Med Center.

I was wrong.

The building where the kid got homogenized, analyzed, everything but labotomized and euthanized (thankfully! sheesh!) used to house insane people. Have you been in one of these fine 1950s-70s era institutions? Interestingly, they don't put a picture on the website. Hmmm, I wonder why?

The decor is lovely. Stark white cinder block for walls and speckled black and white vinyl floor tiles. Narrow, claustrophobic hallways, punctuated by a myriad of doors every three feet or so that lead to tiny rooms on the interior of the building that look out onto a cement-filled courtyard where a behemoth, out-of-scale fountain once shot water into the air. Those were the good ones anyway. Most of the rooms have no windows at all. The exterior rooms look out onto the parking lot. No room that I saw was bigger than 8x10. The rooms where we were interviewed were probably 8x8. This used to be a patient's room.

But the size of rooms wouldn't matter so much if there was a happy color, or any color, anywhere. That still wouldn't diminish the impact of the mold that infests the place. The psych researcher assigned to us said that the building was slotted for demolition, but that "it'll never happen--budgets and all." She sighed, "We don't even get out of this place at lunch." Steve and I brought them chocolate cookies back after lunch. We felt bad for them. Maybe some carbs would up there mood, at least temporarily.

If you weren't crazy going into a place like that, I'm quite certain it could make one mad.