PT’s opportunity to fight the vipEr/S epidemic

Uneasy Chair

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Jefferson County has legitimate claims to fame.

Harboring shipwrights who produce wooden boats of surpassing beauty?

Amazing.

Nurturing published authors, touring musicians, busy artists, plus a kick-ass brass band?

Admirable.

Recycling cardboard on which the worldwide economy relies?

Terrific.

But just wait until the world finds out we also have developed reliable therapeutic methods to treat the global epidemic of vipEr/S (Very Important Person Experiencing Retirement Syndrome).

Symptoms of vipEr/S are most pronounced in those who move from upscale urban areas to rural burgs.

The Quimper Peninsula’s expertise with vipEr/S arises from the fact that these shorelines have long attracted urban refugees.

Stage I vipEr/S patients are first identified by service workers, who are subjected to the exaggerated “shock” expression that signals distaste with local ways.

Stage II vipEr/S manifests as unrestrained eye-rolling, haughty sniffing and sarcastic guffawing over local efforts.

Stage III vipEr/S is often mistaken for Tourette’s Syndrome, as the well-dressed and utterly normal-looking adult will mutter or even shout “Jesus Christ!” or “What the ___!” when exposed to TNDTRW (Things Not Done The Right Way).

Fatal (to comity) is end-stage vipEr/S, characterized by lengthy monologues, both in public places and at private social gatherings, about local insufficiency.

Workers who lack patience have largely been driven out of local restaurants, government offices and retail operations that attract vipEr/S activity.

Those bees who remain are experienced in enduring supercilious remarks and put-downs until those with vipEr/S begin asking instead of telling.

The syndrome must be treated in situ because gestating vipEr/S is nearly undetectable in the urban enclaves in which all wisdom is concentrated.

Epidemiologists say anyone born 1946-1964 is prone to vipEr/S if any of the following risk factors are in play:

  • Net worth of $1 million or more;
  • Retired from executive-level post;
  • Won award from a national/global/galactic professional association;
  • Earned and used advanced degree from a terribly important institution;
  • Featured in flattering feature/review by a real newspaper or television show.

Jefferson County, with dozens of volunteer opportunities that can turn dour bores into helpful allies, is on the cusp of global renown as word leaks out that we can show other towns how to help people get over themselves by entering the local scrum instead of standing off as critics.

One meets vipE/Rs survivors every day at local charities and arts organizations, working within rural limitations to solve problems addressed elsewhere with LSM (Large Sums of Money) and SPR (Slavish Public Relations).

The engagement treatment works because nothing cures vipEr/S faster than when a patient gets on the receiving end of someone else’s vipEr/S-induced lecture on the superiority of the institutions and systems a person left in order to move here.

The other element of the vipEr/S cure is exposure to facts.

Symptoms diminish once the vipEr/S patient absorbs these ideas:

  • Jefferson County’s population of 31,000 is a minor fraction of the places where vipEr/S incubates, such as King County (2 million), Multnomah County (800,000), San Francisco County (888,000); and L.A. County (10 million.)
  • Lack of population density is a feature, not a bug; it may mark individuals here as being the opposite of dense for choosing elbow-room instead of every urban amenity.
  • Making do with less requires careful budgeting when “corporate” and “headquarters” doesn’t exist as a back-up.
  • Rural professionals track the same books, professional journals and podcasts as anyone else, but scale economies make methods and technologies used in large organizations inappropriate for organizations with fewer than 500 users or customers.
  • Acknowledgement of limitations is not the same as acceptance of them.

As we document our clinical practices, local practitioners expect Jefferson County to be very helpful in treatment of vipEr/S variants such as Very Important Person Retired At Post (vip/RAPS or Andy Rooney Syndrome), Very Important Person Experiencing Unemployment (vipEu/S) Very Important Spouse Experiencing Transplant (visEt/S) and Very Important Offspring Enduring Obscurity (vipE/oS).

(Leader Editor Dean Miller is in remission after a bout with vipEu/S, diagnosed by his wife when she observed him writing snotty letters to mayors, county commissioners and the Publishers of the Leader and the Port Angeles paper.).