Volume 3, Issue 3, page 5


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HE DIRT-CAKED car with the bent fenders
'wheezed to a stammering stop in front
of the office, and a man got out. He
stretched, shook the dust from his lap,
and looked around. I was watching him from my
desk which faced the street, saw him pause momentarily at the parking meter, smile in satisfaction at the time still remaining from the
last generous occupant of this parking space,
and cross the sidewalk.

He opened the door, stood blinking in the
comparative darkness of eight fluorescent
lights.
"You're -- you're not Alphia Hart?" he asked,
suspiciously.

I disagreed with him -- but only to the extent of' nodding my head.
"I recognized the green eyeshade," he said,
grinning. "But the horns -- I, well, I really
thought maybe you did have horns." He pointed
to his own forehead.
"You must be a Diantologist," I said, rising to greet him.

He nodded, and we shook hands. "I'm Dr.
-- , Doctor of' Scientology," he said,
and for a moment, I thought his fumbling hands
were searching for his certificate to prove
his words, but he came up merely with a pack of
cigarets. "I came to—well, I understood you
needed some auditing. I wanted to help."
"Whom do you want to help?" I asked. "Me?"
"Sure," he said, lighting his cigaret. Then
from the counter he picked up a copy of the
current ABERREE and began to turn the pages.
Now and then he stopped, read for awhile, and
turned another page. I waited, and waited, and
waited.
"Imagine a problem you can be to yourself,"
he said, after we had seated ourselves in uncomfortable steel chairs moved into the back
room.
"What kind of a problem?" I asked.

He consulted a little pamphlet taken from
the jungles of his coat, and without looking
up, repeated: "Imagine a problem you can be to
yourself."
"Well," I said, kicking this around a bit
in my mind. "I could advertise myself as having infinite answers to unsolvable questions."
"Let's be serious," he growled.

I shrugged. "Would it be O.K. with you if I
imagined myself to be the keeper of a parking
meter in an African jungle?"
My auditor looked up startled, then turned
back to his pamphlet. I tried to see what it
was, but he turned away from me, and in a
voice that wavered slightly, he parroted:
"Imagine a problem you can be to yourself."
This guy's got a cracked record, I thought.
Aloud: "Well, I could be the sole owner of a
bag of' desiccating powder stored under a sieve
at the bottom of the ocean."
"What's a bag of desiccating powder?" he
demanded. Then added, quickly: "I'm sorry. I
should have said what kind of a problem can
you be to yourself:'
"You did say that," I reminded him. "Did
you want to say it again?"
He nodded, and said it again.
"I could be a farmer on the dry bed of' the
Salton Sea, living off the hay I harvested at
10 cents a ton," I said.
"But they couldn't grow -- I'm sorry," he
~. ..e .occ TL — A
:7iato By THE EDITOR
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said. "What kind of' an imagination could you
problem yourself to be?"
The com-lag was getting shorter, and I replied quickly: "Well, I could be the auditor
assigned to find Enos, Oklahoma, on the map,
so I could audit out the poison radiation from
an atomic bomb."
I could see from his open mouth that my
auditor once had had a tonsil operation. "What
could yourself problem your imagination to
be?" he stammered, when he got his jaws operating again.
"How about a street sweeper with a toothbrush after a spring blizzard?" I asked. "Or a
priest selling Bibles at a Scientology convention? Or I could be an artist trying to sell
nude studies at a nudist camp?"
My auditor was beginning to fidget in his
chair, and get a bit red across the forehead.
"Spot a spot in space," he said, suddenly,
stopping my flow of problems.
stopping kind of a spot?" I asked.
"Any kind of a spot," he snapped.
"Big spot? or little spot?" I asked. "And
what color would you like?
"I don't care!" he yelled. "Just spot a
spot in space!"
I pointed to a little green production,
scintillating just over our heads. And as I
pointed, it turned red around the edges, and
began to dance sprightly.
"Yeow!" my auditor yelled. "What's that? Is
that a bug? Don't let it near me. I'm allergic
to bug bites."
I grinned, and the spot went away.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
"Fine," I said, "Why?"
"Well, you know, Doctors of Scientology usually get $25 an hour for auditing?" he said,
raising his voice in a tentative whine.

It was my turn to nod. "Would you settle
for a cup of coffee, and a bowl of cereal --
shredded wheat, sprinkled with Grape-nuts and
wheat-germ?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"But you'd better put a nickel in that
parking meter out there, I said. "Your hour's
almost up, and they give traffic tickets here
for over-parking."
"I ain t got a nickel," he confessed.

So, we took care of his material needs and
with some gasoline we bought for him at the
filling station across the street, he went on
his way rejoicing. In his pocket, of course,
to read at his leisure, were some back copies
of The ABERREE.

Also, we gave him one of Volney Mathison's
"Dollar Meters" -- that little crystal ball that
will give you all the answers to any question
you might ask, as well as tell you whether the
food you are about to eat is going to kill you
or just make you sick. We figured that if our
problems were of so much concern to him, his
problems were even much greater, because we
discovered early in auditing that most auditors almost invariably will run on their preclears that which should be run on themselves.

All this may not mean much to many of our
readers, but we just wanted to explain why you
should expect a higher tone publication out of'
The Editor in the future. He d heard that he
"might" have his insanity taken care of' with
some of the latest super-duper-cooper-popper
techniques -- and we guess this was it.

Hain 't life wonderful? We, too, love everybody, even those who are NOT squirrels.
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