The Pecan Park Eagle

 You know what a “Freudian Slip” is, don’t you? It’s when any of us says something by “mistake” that actually comes closer to communicating what we are really thinking about our subject of speech under the circumstances. Psychologists claim that these “mistakes” are really not “accidents,” but statements from our unconscious minds about what we are really thinking or feeling in a particular situation.

One of my favorite Freudian Slips by a public figure occurred years ago in Austin when former President Lyndon Baines Johnson was showing former President Richard Nixon around his new memorial library on its opening day. For quite some time, we viewed LBJ moving Nixon from room to room, hovering over him, embracing him with an unwanted arm, and very physically almost forcing the smaller man Nixon to look at things that  Lyndon felt were important for him to see.

By the time Nixon reached a microphone to express a few words to the crowd about his impressions of the former rival’s new presidential library, it did n’t take long for him to express his true feelings about the experience via a Freudian Slip of the tongue. “A few moments ago,” Nixon began, “as President Johnson was throwing me around the library …. I mean showing me around the library …” Nixon flashed that broad toothy grin that he often fell back upon in silent uncomfortable moments. This time there was a teeter of supportive laughter from those in the crowd who had been paying visual attention to LBJ’s treatment of Nixon’s library visit. And Nixon’s feelings about it were not buried very deep in his unconscious at all.

On another occasion, and from an album collection of bloopers, a Los Angeles news reporter was reading the facts of a bungled arrest and escape by a fairly obvious convict-in-waiting, one “go-straight-to-jail” fate now foiled by some poor detecting and holding practices by law enforcement at the crime scene. The last line of the reporter’s script was supposed to read, “Information on the prisoner’s escape was provided by Officer John Smith, a detective of the Los Angeles Police Force,” but it came out of the news reporter’s mouth as follows: “Information on the prisoner’s escape was provided by Officer John Smith, a defective of the Los Angeles Police Farce.”

Now that’s a Freudian Slip!

Yogi Berra was especially good at so-called slips of the tongue that sometimes left the recipient wondering: “Was he kidding or serious? Was that a compliment or an insult?” The best example of this type anchors easily to the time that Yogi Berra was invited to a charity function sponsored by Mayor and Mrs. John Wagner in New York City one spring day. Yogi arrived in a lime-colored spring suit, just perfect for the occasion, and he was enthusiastically greeted personally by Mrs. Wagner, launching Yogi into what may be a Freudian Slip of the tongue for the ages.

“Welcome, Yogi,” said Mrs. Wagner as she reached out to greet the Yankee great with a warm smile and handshake. “My goodness. You really look so cool today!”

“Thank you, Mrs. Mayor,” Yogi replied. “You don’t look so hot yourself!”

What???? …. What???

Once upon a time, I worked in my day job as a therapist and family counselor with a couple that were breaking up from an abusive marriage of several years. God bless them now, wherever they may be, with the hope that they are no longer repeating this same painful pattern with either each other or new partners. Back then, their final goodbyes took place in my office when she finally decided to leave and seek a divorce. For all who don’t know this from experience by now, neither marriage nor divorce solve anything by themselves. They are just changes in your legal status. As in baseball, we have to get the lessons of our painful life experience – or nothing changes. We just all fall to the Mendoza Line of social functioning until we take responsibility for what we do to cause our own bad outcomes. Blaming disappointment always on bad luck or other people just buys you a ticket to the lower minors of human endeavor.

At any rate, here’s the Freudian Slip that happened vis-a-vis the breaking up couple’s essential dialogue exchange in my office some several years ago:

SHE: “I’m leaving you.”

HE: “Please don’t do that. I want to stay married to you in the worst way.”

SHE: “I know you do. That’s why I’m leaving you.”

My own worst personal experience with a Freudian Slip occurred when I was an innocent, naive, shy junior at the University of Houston in 1956. Back then we had this student recreational coffee and sandwich shop called the Cougar Den (of local iniquity). It was basically a place where people went to play cards, socialize, listen to rock and roll, skip class, and plan various escapes from personal responsibility. For us new guys, it was a dream mart, one filled with beautiful girls you wanted to meet.

Now that I’m older, I can only look back and smile at my own attempts to find acceptance without risking rejection. At age 21, I still failed to grasp the impossibility of that mission. You don’t even begin to have a chance for acceptance until you are willing to risk rejection and so, one day, I came to the conclusion that I would never meet a girl of riveting interest to me unless I took that risk. I walked across the Den to this particular young lady in full expectation of simply doing a straightforward introduction and then letting everything else fall out from there.

It fell out, allright. Here’s how it went – with a slip of the tarnished silver tongue:

Me: “Hello, Samantha, my name’s Bill. I don’t believe I’ve ever made you.”

She: “No, Bill, you haven’t – and guess what else? You never will.”

End of Samantha story. Beginning of lifelong social lesson. Be careful what you say and how you say it.

If you’ve got a Freudian Slip moment you’d like to share with us, please leave it below as a comment upon this column.