The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

The preface of this story is that just this week I started to subscribe to the New York Times. It is awesome. I had always tried to read it every day, especially in the last couple of years because they used to give them away free at my school, provided you were there early enough or the delivery was late enough so that you could get one of the copies. This year for some reason they don't deliver it anymore. In fact, I think they're now delivering USA Today. What a downgrade. Anyway, Today I got my first Saturday Times and I read a bunch of the magazine and the Maureen Dowd column, and I was thoroughly pleased with myself for being an elitist liberal.

Anyhow, that's not the purpose of my post. Today on the cover of the Arts section they had a picture of the Bottle Man and it said to read a story about him on page whatever. Anyone who has ever gone roller blading in Central Park knows who the Bottle Man is. If you haven't, then I'll explain. Incidentally, before I explain I think that they're gonna tell this same story on 60 Minutes tomorrow night, so if you're reading this before Monday morning, you can check it out for yourself.

In the middle of Central Park there is a bandshell right near that big ass fountain and all of the paths around the park sortof converge there. There's a lot of blacktop to maneuver in instead of just going on the straight path that comprises most of the park. On even a semi-warm day it is always crowded with people on roller blades and skateboards doing tricks or just skating around or whatever. Every time I've ever been to Central Park roller blading there has been this old dude with sports gear on who's usually the center of attention because not only does he skate really well and do all sorts of pirouettes and jumps and what not, but also because while he does those things he has a water bottle balanced on his head. Sometimes he even has two or three on his head.

Like I say, if you've ever been there, then you know exactly who I mean. So I see his picture on the front of this section and I think this will be an interesting piece about this old dude who loves to roller blade. The story is actually a hundred times more interesting. This Bottle Man is a dude named Robert Oxnam who used to be a college professor and was considered an authority on China, and also was a writer. A while back he started to black out and lose time and just seem really frustrated with like so he saw a therapist. This is where it really gets interesting.

At his therapy sessions he discovered that he was blacking out because he suffers from multiple personality disorder. When he would lose time it was because one of his other personalities had come to the surface and done whatever it is that alternate personalities do. MPD is something I studied with enormous interest when I was a psychology major. I mean, that's the type of shit that draws people to be psychology majors in the first place.

The only reason people ever develop this disorder is when they've experienced terrible trauma as a child, usually chronic abuse, and this also came out during Oxnam's therapy sessions, in the form of one of his personalities who took the form of a little scared child who apparently gave details of the abuse he suffered. The general wisdom is that the personalities develop to shield the child from the trauma that's taking place. Wholly new personalities allow the individual to essentially siphon off the memories and they invariably end up suppressed into one of the other personalities. The various other personalities develop as further protection and often take on extreme versions of traits the child wishes to have to be able to stop the trauma.

Anyhow, I won't give you my amateur explanation of the disorder, except to say that the disorder itself is a hotly debated topic. Many psychologists don't even believe that it actually exists. That's sortof beside the point, and, from what little I know about it, I'm inclined to believe that there is at least some merit to the disorder and its extreme symptoms.

Anyway, this guy at the park is one of the alternate personalities of this Robert guy. He's known as Bobby and has adopted an apparent perpetual 19 or 20 year old persona. So when you've seen the guy at the park with the water bottles on his head, you've been watching Bobby, who's one of the alternate personalities of Mr. Oxnam, scholar and writer. That's pretty fascinating, especially since I've seen that guy a hundred times at the park. Apparently through therapy this guy has merged all but three of his personalities back into his one self, so that's good.

The reason that he's getting this attention now in the Times and on 60 Minutes is because he has a book coming out about his life. It's probably worth a read.