My Slip is Showing

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen 

The title is a bit outdated, referring to a piece of women's clothing worn under a dress. They are less common now because of new styles. A woman would be embarrassed to be told, "Your slip is showing". Since I like word play, this is going to add another meaning: Freudian slip.

Someone has a slip of the tongue, a so-called Freudian slip (parapraxis), and some people act like psychology experts. The misstatement becomes a "Gotcha!" moment because inner truth was revealed.

Original image: Pixabay / ArtTower

Although many people think that Ziggy Freud, the putative father of psychoanalysis, is still revered among psychologists, quite the opposite is true. Freud was a fraud and most experts in psychology do not take him seriously anymore. Some of his lingo is still with us, and a few things may have an iota of validity.

We all have verbal slip-ups. They may be caused by fatigue, being preoccupied, distracted, or whatever. Sometimes they're hilarious, like my own instance.

It seems that whenever I hear a voice from someone unseen and imagine what the person looks like, I'm almost always wrong. Mayhaps the speaker reminds me of someone I saw in a movie or on television, so the speaker begins to have longer hair, a bit between blonde and brown, the face begins to form...if I see or meet her, she has short dark hair and I realize I was picturing Jennifer Aniston.

That prolly happens to just about everyone.

Okay, so I was working on something while sitting at the dining room table and heard someone speak. I spoke to my wife and wanted to say, "...my mental images", but it came out as, "...my mental illnesses". We both needed the good laugh.