Wake Up Bitch and Fix Me Some Chicken: Crazy People Say the Darnest Things

WAKE UP BITCH AND FIX ME SOME CHICKEN is a humorous look at the patients and staff at a state-run mental health hospital. In his first book, John R. Booth chronicles stories of some of his most memorable patients during a career as a social worker. Whether divinely driven or by serendipitous happenstance, John R. Booth, after a career in the pharmaceutical business, found himself working as a social worker at the largest mental health facility in his state. His preconceptions of what the patients would be like began an almost immediate transformation upon his arrival. He had heard all the stories and seen all the movies that depicted these souls as dangerous mental defectives and was sure that his life expectancy would take a turn for the worse with prolonged exposure to the “crazy kooties” he knew they must be infested with. On that first day, it took about ten minutes before his ideas of mental illness began the transformation from shock and revulsion to seeing humor in the patients’ distorted reality and their reactions and adaptation to this reality.
It is true that some patients were truly scary and dangerous. Most turned out to be really funny. Sometimes they would say funny things, and at other times they would say things funny. John knew it was wrong to “talk out of school,” but some of this stuff was too good to keep to himself, so he would take these stories home and tell his family and friends. They universally believed that he was a liar and had to be making this stuff up; however, after he repeatedly brought home new tales, the consensus changed. It was agreed that he was not smart enough or creative enough to fashion these characters himself, and they must indeed be actual people and events.
WAKE UP BITCH AND FIX ME SOME CHICKEN is a collection of these anecdotes as seen through John’s eyes. Dan, Poor Pitiful Paul, Doug the Firebug, and all the others are real patients, with real problems, who are really funny, if you just look for it. Whether it is midgets in the walls, misunderstood English, fast-talking Gilbert, or the psychobabble of Nurse Kiki, rest assured, you will not “sleep right through it.” This easy read will keep you turning pages, give you a new view of the mentally ill, put a smile on your face. In the end, you’ll see why John believes that his patients are some of the most precious people on earth.