September's Children

by Lubrican

Chapters : 1 | 2 | 3

Chapter One

Usually one can make a plan to treat a patient based on the diagnosis of a known affliction that is treatable with known methods. There are also diseases we know exist, but haven't figured out how to mediate yet.

But the really tough cases are those in which the difficulty lies not in treatment of the patient, but in trying to decide whether or not the fantasies being displayed are, in fact ... fantasies. Maybe you've heard the saying "I'm not paranoid ... everybody really is out to get me!" Well, there actually are situations where that's true. It's rare, but not impossible.

I met the patient I'll call Bob when his case was assigned to me for a mental evaluation to determine whether he was capable of understanding the charges against him in court. He'd been arrested for groping a pregnant woman in a restaurant. It was late August and we'd been through a grueling heat wave. A lot of people had sought relief in air conditioned restaurants and bars and because of that I assumed there was alcohol involved. When I checked the police report, though, I found that his blood alcohol level suggested he'd had nothing to drink at all. At least nothing alcoholic. The blood sample obtained wasn't screened for other mind altering drugs.

Bob was still in jail the first time I visited him. Normally, somebody in his situation would have been released, either on bail or to his own recognizance. It was a minor charge, after all. All the report said he'd done was put his hands on the woman's swollen belly and "behave irrationally." But in this case, whatever he told the judge during his arraignment resulted in him being slapped right back in a cell until I could get there and do an evaluation.

The jail has what they call a "First aid room" that can be used for the kind of initial exam I was being asked to do. Bob presented as a completely unremarkable thirty-seven year old white male. He had none of the physical features of a man who has abused drink for years, and he carried too much body fat to have been involved with most other drugs for any extended period. Of course there are substances like LSD or PCP that can wreck a mind while leaving the body unaffected.

While my initial interview with him was supposed to gather information to decide what my report to the judge would be, I always approach these situations with an eye toward possible future involvement with the subject as a patient. My initial approach, therefore, was more to get the lay of the land, rather than come up with a firm diagnosis or prognosis. The first step was to talk to him and see where his thought processes were. If needed, further interviews and tests would come later that would illuminate underlying causes of concern. Assuming there actually developed any concern concerning his level of sanity, of course.

Bob was already in the First aid room when I was taken there myself. I was handed from one guard to another, a burly, tall man, who stood against the door once I was inside the room. Bob was in restraints. The guard looked bored, but I asked the routine question anyway.

"Has he displayed any violent tendencies?"

The guard just shook his head.

"Is there any really need for you to be in here with us?"

"It's policy," he said calmly.

I turned to Bob, who appeared to be sitting comfortably in an uncomfortable chair. I introduced myself and explained why I was there.

"Will the presence of the guard bother you while we talk?" I asked.

He looked at the guard and then addressed him.

"You're married, aren't you?"

The guard blinked and looked at his left hand, at the silver on his ring finger.

"Do you have any children?" Bob went on.

The guard still made no answer. Bob seemed unconcerned that the guard wasn't saying anything.

"Were any of your kids born in September or October?"

The guard moved then, centering his weight on both feet. This simple question had obviously hit a nerve. That was fascinating on one level, both because of the reaction to such a banal question and his obvious unwillingness to share any kind of personal information with an inmate, no matter how harmless. I decided to remain silent and watch. As so often happens, silence is uncomfortable and people try to fill it unconsciously.

"I've got one kid who was born in September," the guard said. "How did you know that? Are you psychic or something?"

Bob blinked a couple of times and then looked at me, ignoring the guard. "It would be better if he wasn't in here while you talk to me."

This was the first indication that Bob's thought processes might be irrational, but he didn't tense up or display any aggression. Additionally his choice of phrase was interesting. He hadn't said he didn't want the guard in there. He said it would be better if the guard wasn't present. I would expect the former, and for him to use the latter was puzzling. I threw him a bone by addressing the guard.

"This is technically a medical procedure," I explained. "Privacy will enhance the success of my objective."

The guard shrugged. "I'll be right outside if you need me." He opened the door and then paused on his way out. "Unless the watch commander says I have to come back in."

"Have him see me if there's a problem," I said.

The door closed and I sat down across the gray steel table from Bob.

"So you're a shrink," said Bob. He still showed no signs of agitation.

"I'm a psychiatrist," I corrected. "Your brain will be exactly the same size when we're done as it is right now." I sometimes use that little joke to defuse anxiety in a new patient and break the ice.

He gave me a wane smile. "You're going to think I'm insane," he said calmly. "Everybody does."

"Why don't you let me be the doctor," I suggested. "You want to talk about why you got arrested?"

"Sure," he said lightly. "Beats sitting in a cell with a bunch of drunks." He smiled ... a perfectly normal, completely ordinary facial expression to follow such a statement. "By the way, doc," he went on. "Do you have any children born in September or October?"

I knew we'd get to the seat of what was appearing to be an obsession of some sort. He was obviously willing to discuss it.

"I do not," I said. "I have a nephew who was born in October though. Does that count?" I didn't mention that I was born in September myself. If that month had some trigger effect on his psychosis I didn't want to disqualify myself right out of the chute.

He frowned, and then said something that was mysterious on the face of it, and which would turn out to be prophetic.

"Well, Doc, assuming you decide I'm not as crazy as a loon, you may think about your nephew ... and sister ... differently by the time we get done."

What his situation could possibly have to do with my sister was beyond me, so I just smiled and suggested we get started.

I went through the routine questions with him. I asked him if he had, in fact, groped a pregnant woman, and he explained that he had touched her, but not for sexual reasons.

"We were in line together, waiting for tables," he said. "I was alone. She was with another woman, her sister I think. We got to talking and when she said she was due in September I put my hand on her belly. She got upset, and I tried to explain why I'd done it. That was when she freaked and they called the cops."

"Why do you think she got scared, Bob?" I asked.

"They all get scared," he said. "The ones I'm interested in, I mean. I don't pay any attention to the others." He blinked. "Well, that's not exactly true. I like pregnant women. I think they're beautiful. But I'm only really interested in certain ones."

"Why is that, Bob?" I asked.

"That's the part that will make you think I'm wacko," he said calmly. "That's why the women get scared too ... when I ask them about how they got pregnant."

"You ask them how they got pregnant?" I couldn't help raising my eyebrows. This was a very interesting fetish already. "Why, Bob? I have a feeling you know how a woman gets pregnant."

"Oh, I know how, all right," he said. "In some cases, though, the important thing is who got them pregnant."

He wasn't making any sense. There was no thread to his comments. I began to think he had a dissociative problem. He must have seen something in my eyes, because he raised one manacled hand, palm out.

"Look, Doc, why don't I just tell you the story. It will make more sense that way and you'll hear it in order. You'll still think I'm a candidate for the loony bin, but maybe it won't be as frustrating for you, okay?"

"You're going to tell me the story of why you groped this pregnant woman," I suggested.

"You'll understand that after I tell you the story. It's a long story, though. Have you got time?"

I looked at my watch. I had forty-five minutes, which was plenty of time for any story a dissociative mind would try to spin out.

I leaned back and nodded.

He started off by going off on a tangent first, which lent more credence to my budding diagnosis.

"I'm going to assume you don't believe in magic," he said. "Most men of science and medicine don't. But I'd like to propose something." He looked to see what my reaction would be, but I held my face impassive. "I'd like to propose, just for the sake of argument, that any phenomenon that science cannot explain may be assumed to be magic."

"I can't agree to that," I said.

"I understand that lots of things that have been called magic have been disproven by the scientific process," he said. "But there are things that science cannot explain. I can't prove they're magic, but you also can't prove they are not. True?"

"Within a very narrow meaning of the concept of proof, I'll accept that," I said.

"So magic could exist," said Bob. "Because we can't prove conclusively that it cannot."

"That's like saying there must be a color named blixtorg, because no one has proven there is not such a color," I said.

"We understand each other perfectly," he said, with a small smile.

I blinked. I had a sneaking feeling I had just agreed that magic could exist, and that there was a color named blixtorg, which nobody had yet seen. At least in Bob's mind.

"Go on," I said. "I thought we were talking about your obsession with pregnant women."

"We are," he said. "May I go on?"

"Of course," I said.

"What do you know about global birth rates?" he asked.

"I thought you were going to tell me the story, not ask me questions," I said, a little peeved.

"I can do that," he said, and launched into what sounded for all the world like a professor lecturing an undergraduate student.

"Something happened to me as a child that was the seed of my obsession. I'll tell you about that later, but it resulted in me doing a whale of a lot of research, and you need to hear that part first.

"I was born in September. In school, I noticed that an awful lot of other kids also had birthdays in September and October ... more, in fact, than any other months. There were so many more, in fact, that teachers picked one day of each month to have a classroom birthday party for all of the kids born in those months, instead of having individual ones, like the other kids got. That stuck in my mind for some reason. It was just something odd, back then, but then something happened to me that made me get a lot more interested in that phenomenon. What happened is something I need to tell you later. What is most important is that it started my obsession.

"I started collecting and reviewing data concerning birth rates by month. I found out I was right. The birth rate spikes in late September and early October ... not just in America, but all over the world, Doctor. I'll say it again. More babies are born in the months of September and October than any other months of the year. I have the data to show this phenomenon exists in multiple countries and has been a trend, statistically, for over a hundred years. No good data is available prior to that because of insufficient or suspect record keeping. What this means is that more babies are conceived during late December than any other month."

He paused, looking at me as if he expected me to realize something. I didn't, and to be honest, I still thought he was rambling. I wanted him to keep talking, however, and I admit I was a little curious about where this would end up. That's because I was also born in September. I didn't tell him that, of course. I just nodded to keep him going. He looked almost disappointed, and then spoke again.

"I wanted to know why."

He stopped, closed his eyes for a long moment and then reopened them. He looked anguished.

"Actually I already knew why, but I didn't want to believe it. I thought I was insane, and was actually trying to prove it, because that would prove that what I knew to be the case was false."

He was definitely rambling, now, and it was appearing more and more that his dissociative problems made it difficult for him to concentrate.

"What was this thing you believed, but didn't want to?" I asked.

He held up a hand. "Please. I know this sounds disjointed, but it isn't. I've never actually been able to lay all this out to anybody, so this is the first time I'm presenting the evidence. I'm just trying to boil a decade of research down into a fifteen minute presentation. Then I'll tell you why, but you must hear the rest first, or you'll simply get up and walk out."

"Go on then," I said. I resisted the urge to looked at my watch.

"Initially I just asked people why they thought more kids were conceived in December than any other month. I was hoping I'd find a reason other than the one I knew about. Most people thought it's because inclement weather restricts opportunities for entertainment during December."

"Cabin fever," I volunteered. "It's dark and cold, and what's more comforting than a warm embrace?"

"Exactly," he said. "But the problem with that is that in any given December, while half the globe is mired in winter, the other half is enjoying summertime. Records of birth rates clearly establish that more babies are born in September in both the northern and southern hemispheres."

For the first time since I had met him, he had presented a comment that engaged real interest on my part. He had a point, assuming his "research" was valid.

"Now another group of people hypothesized that December is identified with the Christian celebration of the Birth of Christ. Genesis, which is also part of Hebrew Torah, includes the instruction by God to 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.' Those people suggested that religious fervor causes Christians to mate during this time of year."

"That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?" I asked. I couldn't help it.

"Oh it looked good at first," he said smiling. "More than 34,000 separate Christian groups have been identified across the world. But you also have to consider that there are 19 major world religions which are subdivided into a total of 270 large religious groups, and many smaller ones. Christians represent a minority of overall believers."

His voice took on that tone and rhythm that suggests someone is reciting something from memory.

"It's hard to get really reliable statistics, because there's a lot of secrecy on the part of some groups, but the basic composition of religious affiliations across the globe are something like this:

"About 33% of the population are Christian, 19% Muslim; 13.4% Hindu; 12.7% non religious; 6.4% follow one of the Chinese traditions; 5.9% are Buddhist; 4% are Sikhs; 3.8% are part of an ethnic religious sect, 3.5% are atheists, 1.7% ascribe to a historically new religion, like Scientology; and 2% are Jews. That leaves a total of 4% in other categorizations."

"You memorized all of that," I said. Whatever his obsession was, it had a real grip on him.

"The real point, doctor," he said patiently, "is that the birth rate is consistent across all those groups. What's going on has nothing to do with Christian religious fervor."

I blinked. I hadn't thought of that aspect of his listing. This was actually an interesting mystery. I was sure there was a reasonable explanation for it all, but I could see how he got interested in it. He just hadn't been able to control his level of interest.

"So what next?" I asked.

"Well, a few people thought that it's because a lot of parents believe that September is the best month of the year to give birth to a baby. So they plan it that way." He looked at me.

"And?"

"Well think about it," he said. "In the northern hemisphere the baby will only be three months old when the weather starts to turn to shit and there's a danger of the child freezing to death. And in the southern hemisphere it's getting ungodly hot when the child is still an infant, and more vulnerable to heat stroke. What parent would plan that? For that matter, how many parents, particularly on a global basis, try to plan what month a child will be born in at all? They just try to have one."

"That sounds reasonable," I said. I kept from wincing. I had just validated some of his reasoning, and that might prove unwise in the future. "But common sense doesn't necessarily come into play in issues of love. So what else is there?"

He folded his arms and sat back.

"There is only the actual reason, the reason I know about, and which causes everyone I've ever talked to about this to assume I'm off my rocker."

"Can you tell me that yet?" I asked.

"Sure," he said, almost flippantly. "Why not." He looked past my shoulder at the door of the cell. "But could you ask if maybe having a cup of coffee in here is all right? I'm dry as a bone, and you're going to need the caffeine in a minute."

The guard argued at first, but finally admitted there was no specific policy that he knew of that actually prohibited coffee being present during an evaluation. He wouldn't leave to go get it himself of course, but he got on the radio and asked for two cups to be brought. They arrived in the hands of a very curious uniformed woman. I thanked her for them and took them back inside. I sat down and waited.

"Okay," he said calmly. "There is only one other phenomenon associated with December that on a world wide basis, given variations in the cultural story told, is common to a preponderance of individuals in any culture. That phenomenon is called by different names in different languages and cultures, and there is some significant variation in how it is described, but the fact is that most cultures have what we here in America call the Santa Claus myth."

I blinked. He was gone again, and off on some tangent. He'd dissociated so much that he wasn't even on the subject at all, other than mentioning December. He kept going, though, so I let him, thinking he'd jerk to a stop at some point, when he realized he was way out in left field.

"Now while the "myth" of Santa was originally instituted by Christians of the Caucasian race, it was quickly adopted by Christians of all races and ethnicities. There is building evidence to believe that even children in cultures and religions other than those made up primarily of Christians are lobbying for participation in the Santa phenomenon. All races and ethnic groups in America have joined in, at least to some degree. Even the Jews let their children celebrate Christmas sometimes, so that they don't feel left out of all their non-Jewish friends' celebrations."

He grinned then, which was completely bizarre, considering what he'd just said.

"Doc, did you know that a lot of social service organizations have long touted the danger of belief in Santa, because those children who are in cultures without a Santa myth feel deprived and saddened by the fact that they aren't good little boys and girls? If they were, Santa would come, would he not? He goes to every little American Child's house, and to all the houses in England and Australia and on and on. He comes to Johnny's house, and Debbie's house. Look at all the presents they got! Look on the satellite feed on December twenty-fourth, at the American weatherman who has Santa right there on radar! And so, in their depression, they believe in Santa, even if there is no cultural basis for that belief in their own country. And it is, for all intents and purposes, just as strong a belief in the Jolly Old Elf as that held by Johnny and Debbie. How, otherwise, could they be hurt by a creature who does not exist?"

He chuckled. I did not. I had actually seen violence in later life that, through analysis, could be traced back to a feeling of being "bad" because Santa hadn't come to their house one year. Children that young couldn't rationalize that mom and dad were just broke that year, and that Santa didn't actually exist. But their mind could put the stamp of "BAD!" on themselves, and later that could explode into selfish violence. My mind was jerked away from that when he went on.

"So these social service people have tried for years to dispense with Santa, because it isn't fair to propose this myth and disappoint so many children." He laughed, and it was an honest, deep laugh that shocked me. "They've tried denying the existence of this Elf for centuries, with no appreciable success. If anything, Santa's popularity has grown by leaps and bounds across the world."

He stopped again and tilted his head at me.

"But what has this to do with the birth rate?" he asked.

I stayed mute. He was off the tangent, and it was disturbing to think that what he'd said was going to be brought to bear on the issue somehow. He was making connections that I couldn't see, which was disappointing because I hoped he could be rational.

"I'm getting there, Doc. Just be patient with me for a little while longer. All this has to do with that thing I said happened when I was a little boy, but there's one more thing I need to tell you about first."

"All right," I said.

"I did an admittedly unscientific, but extensive survey. I interviewed over four thousand men who claim to "be" Santa. You know the kind I'm talking about. They dress up like some version of the jolly old man and appear in department stores or at the Mall or wherever. I pretended to be a journalist, and asked them why they did it. Some of them said it was just for the extra money, but they were in the minority, by far. But a lot of them turn out to be professional Santas. I mean they belong to organizations and pay dues and have standards and all that thing. Most of them said they were trying to make a difference in some child's life. These were the ones who, with a straight face, say they are merely subcontractors to the real Santa Claus who is unable to let each and every child in the world sit on his lap precisely because of his exponential growth in popularity. These men all claim to report directly to the Elf, in terms of the orders placed with them by children."

"They told you this," I said. I couldn't keep the sarcasm completely out of my voice.

"That's what they tell the children," he said. "They didn't tell me that. But they did tell me what the children ask for, and I have no reason to believe they were lying about that."

"And what do the children ask for?" I asked. I snuck a look at my watch. There were still ten minutes I could give him.

"I couldn't get a percentage, because some of these guys say it changes from year to year. A lot of these guys have been playing Santa for ten or fifteen years. But a lot of kids ask for a little brother or sister."

He stopped, and looked at me again, like he'd said something important. A moron couldn't have missed his unstated hypothesis. It was such a level of insanity that it just didn't jive with his ability to be rational enough to carry on a simple conversation. I was so stunned at the mixture of signals I was getting from him that I couldn't say anything, and my silence apparently signaled him to go on.

"I didn't stop there," he said. "I joined a volunteer organization that goes through all the letters that kids send to Santa. There are millions of letters sent to him every year, and the Post Office shuttles them off to groups like the one I joined. Some of them try to make Christmas wishes come true, and some of them send a note back to the kid explaining that he's all out of space ships that really work and would take them to the moon and stuff like that. But I collected the ones where somebody asked for a little brother or sister. I have over four hundred thousand of them, Doc."

"You saved over four hundred thousand letters to Santa?" I asked, incredulous. Maybe I could publish something on this patient.

"Just the ones who asked for a little brother or sister," he said calmly. I have them filed alphabetically by city of origin. Some day somebody is going to want to research them, once that somebody decides I'm not a raving lunatic."

He sounded so sure of himself. I should have accounted for that, but his level of certainty was so high that I had to explore further. I decided to do that by poking a stick in his spokes, just to see what his reaction would be.

"Bob, it's obvious where this is going. I'm not going to joke around with you and say that's the stork's job, but I do not believe that you believe Santa puts babies in prettily wrapped boxes under the tree."

"Exactly the point," he said, quite seriously. Now I'll tell you what happened when I was a kid," he said. "Please let me finish before you say anything. I've never told this to anybody before. It makes sense to tell it to you, actually. I really hope you decide I am a raving lunatic, and can prove it to me. It would be so much better if that were true."

By his tone of voice it was obvious he didn't want to believe this memory of his childhood was true. It was also obvious he'd thought a lot about this. Who wants to be categorized as a lunatic?

The answer to that one is obvious, once you think about it: only someone who believes something really horrible.

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