“The banana but the clouds won’t let me, and the doctor shoes my running out of numbers!”
George sat there on the bench furiously exclaiming sentences like this. He had been committed to the state mental hospital 5 years earlier. Nobody knew his last name, and he wouldn’t say.
In fact, besides saying “good morning,” “good night,”” and “my name is George,” he would only speak to others in word-salad – a jumble of words that made no sense.
Many doctors had tried to treat George. They all failed.
Then a new doctor came to the state mental hospital. He tried a new approach.
The new doctor didn’t reason with George, didn’t didn’t try to coax or cajole George into making sense, didn’t encourage George to talk about his childhood.
Instead, the new doctor sat down on the bench next to George, and started producing word salad of his own:
“Why does the window taste like blue? I sat the clock to told bark dinner.”
To which, George would reply with his own word-salad. The doctor would then have some new interesting word salad to add. George would ask a word-salad question for clarification. The doctor would give a word-salad answer with all the details.
This went on for months until finally one day, after a particularly dense bit of word-salad by the doctor, George said,
“Talk sense, Doctor.”
“Certainly,” said the doctor. “I’ll be glad to. What is your last name?”
“O’Donovan, said George. “And it’s about time somebody who knows how to talk asked. Over five years in this lousy joint…” … and then George went back to a few sentences of pungent word salad.
A few months later, George was released. He had largely gone back to speaking normally, though he often tacked on a bit of word-salad to the end of his speech, just for good measure. As he said in one interview, “Nothing like a little nonsense in life, is there Doctor?”
You might wonder 1) the point of this story, and more importantly 2) what it has to do with anything you might care about.
As for 2, I’m telling you this story because it’s relevant if you care about creating change, whether that’s turning sick people into healthy, or indifferent into engaged, or strangers into customers.
As for 1, the point of this story, it’s probably obvious. But if not, you will have to wait for my new 10 Commandments book, The 10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Hypnotists, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Propagandists, and Stage Magicians.
I’m working on this book right now, chipping away, producing a furious word-salad of my own. I hope to have it finished by the end of October.
Meanwhile, if you want to get my existing 10 Commandments book, and find out some control-beating breakthroughs A-list copywriters like Gary Bencivenga, Gene Schwartz, and Jim Rutz, you can find that here blanket forgot to listen: