“You Want a Turd Sandwich?”
Illustration by Stefan Gasic
Sometimes The Devil works through other people. For example, if he can’t get me to believe I’m an idiot, then he’s going to work through other people to call me an idiot. I call this a “turd sandwich.”
I used to eat a lot of turd sandwiches. Believing I’m an idiot is just one type of turd sandwich. I’ve eaten enough of them to tell you that there are many varieties of turds. Here are a few flavors:
Turd of obligation: “If you love me, you’ll do this for me.”
Turd of reciprocation: “Remember when I helped you out?”
Turd of envy: “But you have more X than I do.”
Turd of aimless frustration: “I need to tell you how angry I am.”
Turd of genetic lottery: “You were born into this family, and this is how we show love.”
Turd of superiority: “I have an important call with the CEO, so can you take care of…”
If someone is trying to feed me a turd sandwich, I’m outta there. It’s not that I lack compassion or that they don’t deserve help, but I know a mental prison when I see it. Healthy, well-meaning people don’t hand out turd sandwiches—nor do they expect people to eat them.
In the book Crucial Conversations, the turd sandwich has a more wholesome name: the fool’s choice. They define it as: “false dilemmas that suggest we face only two options (both of them bad), when in fact we face several choices—some of them good. We suffer from ‘Or’ thinking.”
FYI, this comic is one of several from my book Mental Prisons.
