So I’m a new dad.
If you couldn’t tell by my cardigan and my Mr. Rogers shoes.
It’s pretty great.
They give that to you right in the delivery room.
I think my favorite part about being a dad is doing everyday stuff with my daughter for
the very first time.
We were riding the subway together for the very first time just when she was like two
months old.
And I had her in one of those Ergo carriers.
Like any other dads in the house?
Wow…this joke is going to be rough.
Ahhh…alright..umm..so Ergo carrier, it’s like this thing you put your baby in and they’re
like strapped to you.
So she was right here.
I could feel every movement.
I could feel her hands twitch as she was reacting to like all the subway sounds, the piss smell,
and I could see her react to the piss smell.
I was like, “Oh honey, that’s just urine, yeah that’s your first time smelling someone
else’s urine.”
It was magical.
And we were walking along and looking at all the stuff.
And then suddenly my chest gets like really warm.
And I look down and I’m like, “Sweetie, did you just piss all over your dad?
Yeah you did!
It leaked through the diaper.”
And I was like BEEP…I was so jealous.
I was jealous.
Cause like think about it.
For a baby, the whole world is one giant public toilet.
They can take a piss anywhere they want.
And I was so jealous.
Cause I hate public toilets.
When I say public toilet, you think what?
Ewwww.
What else?
Penn Station.
Penn station!!!!
Right??!?
It’s nasty!
That’s the thing our brain does.
It forms these associations.
IT does it unconsciously, it does this all the time.
That’s all that Pavlovian conditioning.
Strange stuff just gets conditioned together.
So I was in high school taking Latin cause I thought I was going to go to med school.
I didn’t.
I ended up getting a PhD.
When I broke the news to my dad he was like, “Baita…do you know what M.D. stands for?”
And I was like, “Medical doctor.”
And he’s like, “No…M.D. stands for money doctor.
Do you know what Ph.D. stands for?
Poor hungry doctor.”
So I was in Latin class.
And I was the only freshmen.
It was mostly seniors in the class.
So I sat in the back because I was really uncomfortable.
And there was this one other class who was in the back of the classroom with me.
We were both kind of the odd men in the group.
And he was this Swedish exchange student.
He kinda looked like Kramer but like with bigger hair.
And so we would sit together, we would study together, we would walk outside together and
he was like, “Ali!
We are good friends!”
And I was like, “yeah man, I’m so glad we’re friends.”
And one day I had this giant Mr. Pibb.
The kind that would give Mayor Bloomberg and aneurysm if he saw it.
I had to take this massive piss.
So I run to the bathroom.
And for those of you who aren’t familiar with boys public school bathrooms, they’re
fricking gross.
Ewww is the right word.
I’m about to go in the stall and the stall door is barley hanging on.
It’s all bent.
And I go inside and the toilet just has this mountain of poo and it’s been pissed around.
And so I’m not going to do that.
So I go to the urinal and there’s urinal code.
So if other guys are there, you pick the urinal that’s most far away.
So I was there and I go into triangle formation.
Cause I was a little nervous.
I can’t go when people are watching me.
So here’s the wall and I’m in triangle formation.
So I pee this way, unzip and it’s like BOOM.
Which is not really true.
It’s more like BEEP.
So I’m peeing right.
The other guys have left and now I’m feeling more comfortable.
You’ve got this thing called the urethral sphincter which kinda opens up and let’s
all the flow come up.
And mine’s wide open.
And that Mr. Pibb is just flowing right out.
And then I hear this voice - “We are good friends, Ali!”
And I’m like “Ahhh…what’s this dude doing here?!?”
He stands right next to me.
And I’m like “Why’s he breaking urinal code?”
Out of nowhere, I feel this warmth, on my legs, he’s taking a piss on my legs, and
he’s like “We are good friends, Ali, we are good friends.”
I run out, my urinary spinster is all tight, I can’t pee, I run out and every step I
take I feel that moisture in my foot.
NEVER WENT TO THE URINAL EVER AGAIN.
I couldn’t do it.
Brains, association, urinal, getting peed on, weird Swedish guy.
That’s my horror story.
I became an expert in horror stories.
I treat anxiety.
And research is me-search...Yeah, anxiety or treating anxiety?
Yeah, let’s give it up for it.
Thank you…I don’t know what we’re clapping for.
And so I treat anxiety.
And I got into this business I thought it would be like Professor X.
It’s actually a little more like summoning your inner douche.
I love treating OCD.
OCD, there’s this thing in your head that tells you that something’s done.
And with OCD it doesn’t quite work right.
So I’m working with someone and he’s got OCD about contamination.
He’s afraid that if he bumps into people he might get SARS.
So I was like alright, summon my inner douche, how can we bring about these symptoms and
help him get used to them.
Exposure.
Habituation.
So we walk through Times Square.
And we like walk into people.
We’re walking into people.
We were those guys!
YEAH!
We found like tourists, unsuspecting ones, and we just bumped into them.
And then he was afraid about contamination from surfaces.
So we went to Starbucks and we touched that surface.
And I was like we’re not done yet, now you have to go like.
Inner douche!
And he’s like, “Ali, this is helping so much.
There’s just this one other thing.
I’ve got this like fear of being peed on in the bathroom and it would be perfect if
we go to a urinal and you pee right next to me, I’ll get used to it and we’ll be good
to go.”
And I was like, “Mother BEEP!”
I said, “Okay well let’s just plan that out, I think we’ll be ready to do that in
about a month.”
And I had one month to get ready for this exposure.
So I found my douchiest friend.
And I was like, “you gotta help me out man.”
And he’s like “alright!”
So it was like Rocky.
[Hums Rocky theme song]
He’d find a urinal and he’d go, “Go”.
And I was like [Hums Rocky theme song].
It took me a long time to pee that first time.
We kept doing it and for the last one, I climbed to the top fo the stairs, I was at a urinal
at a movie theater, my friend was right there, and I was trying to pee and he’s squirting
me with a squirt gun.
And then the day came where I had to treat this guy.
I was standing right next to him.
One minute went by.
Two minutes went by.
No pee pee.
Three minutes go by.
Drip.
And that sphincter opened wide up.
I had a Mr. Pibb earlier for good luck.
It worked out.
And then afterwards he’s like, “Hey doc that was so great man.
I love how you like took so long to pee.
There’s all this uncertainty.
I didn’t know if you were peeing or not.
And that was the best part of it.”
And I was like, “yeah man that was totally planned.”
Thank you all you’ve been great!