Wilt Chamberlain And I

So Wilt Chamberlain once saw a psychiatrist for about a month at $50 a session to help fix his woeful foul shooting, but “after I came out of it after a month…the psychiatrist was a better free throw shooter than I was,” the NBA legend laughed about in an interview back in the ‘90s. It just goes to show you that doctors can’t fix everything.  I can relate, after chatting with a sports psychologist after Sunday mass about my golf putting yips, I shot a 74 – on the mini golf course – leaving me on the short end of a match with a 5-year-old after my orange ball got stuck in the windmill, which is really hard to do. I realize there’s a movement in our country to hold doctors, nurses, therapists and teachers more accountable these days, to tie their salaries and payment to outcomes, which I’m all for, but I’m fairly sure we should be realistic about what we’re asking, particularly when they are strapped with inputting every detail of their time into a laptop and seem to be encouraged to see 15 some patients every day or handle classes so big and at varying stages of development you could start a football team. No wonder they forget things, no wonder it’s so hard to get us to change our behavior, our mindset.  Maybe some ailments – like my putting, and perhaps even the great Wilt Chamberlain’s free throws – are unfixable.