I had a full-blown panic attack this afternoon – not the kind that sends people racing to the hospital sure they’re having a heart attack – the kind that sends you to the grocery store for a half-gallon of ice cream, a People magazine, and a spoon. You know what I’m talking about.

So here’s the thing – there are some places you just shouldn’t go and your on-line checking account is one of them. We just weren’t meant to get minute-by-minute updates on our financial status. It can overload your head with way too much information and that’s exactly what happened to me. So what did I do when I got a gander at my balance? Like any self-respecting ostrich I stuck my head in the sand and went to the movies.

A huge tub of buttered popcorn, a diet coke, the back row, my feet on the seat in front of me and I’m good for a full two hours of blissful oblivion. God bless Edison or who ever it was that invented motion pictures. Marx said that religion is the opium of the masses but for this mass of paranoia it’s movies. Scary, romantic, funny, sad it doesn’t matter. I love ‘em all.

The unfortunate but simple fact is that you cannot stay at the movies forever. Some irritating, underpaid high school kid will eventually turn up the lights and start picking up the trash and you have to leave. That’s when the voice in my head started screaming, “you’re going to lose the house, have to work at McDonalds, be publicly humiliated, and wind up a bag lady on the street – you’re a complete screw-up and everyone’s going to know it.”

By the time I got home the surround sound was at such a volume that my hands were shaking and I could barely snarl hello to my 90-year-old mom whose face reminded me that if I had to sleep under the overpass she would be there right beside me.

I needed numbing agents quick. Turn on the TV, start up the computer, shove a banana in my mouth (no chocolate in sight,) kick the dog, steal one of my mom’s valium, pace the floor waiting for it to kick in.

Is it peace or is it prozac? I don’t care – no need to know that. When the moon is full and the world’s too close I just keep my smile and I up my dose.

God love Cheryl Wheeler and god love my mom’s doc.

Okay I’m calmer. Not destitute right now. The mortgage is paid for this month. My mom won’t have to sell her favorite rocking chair and I don’t have to set foot in McDonalds, unless I have to pee. I never buy anything at McDonalds but I do stop there to pee. The bathrooms are clean and somehow it just seems right.

Well, it’s Wednesday night and I have to run get my lottery ticket. See I have a retirement plan; everything’s going to be just fine.