Super Ted and the Sand Man ..

Most super villains commit crimes even though they know what they are doing is wrong. Many of them are simply selfish and uncaring and will do bad things without feeling any remorse or guilt at all.  But sometimes people can also do damage without actually meaning to cause harm. In fact, some super villains actually see themselves as superheroes even though the things they do negatively affect other people. 

One such super villain was Dr. Lucas Grainer. Dr. Grainer was once a respected psychiatrist who specialized in hypnosis. He believed that he could use hypnotism as a way to relax people and make them forget their troubles. Grainger met a lot of very unhappy people in his line of work. Some were grieving a lost loved one, others were stuck in dead end jobs, and a few even had serious troubles in their relationships with family members and romantic partners. Although everyone’s troubles were caused by different reasons all the patients were similarly distressed about their circumstances. 

Dr. Grainger truly wanted to help his patients by giving them relief from their troubles and worries. The problem was that Dr. Grainger did not give his patients peace of mind by teaching them how to cope with their problems. Instead, he used hypnosis to lull them into sleep and a relaxed state of mind. He used this act of escapism to make them feel cured…but once he woke them up the relaxed state vanished and the patients went on living the same stressed lives as they did before.

Dr. Grainger started to believe that being under a hypnosis induced sleep was the only way to relax people and permanently free them of their troubles. When under the influence of hypnosis, none of Dr. Grainger’s patients reported feeling worried or unhappy and he considered that to be praiseworthy testimonies of his talents as a doctor of mental health. He started to believe that keeping people under hypnosis was the only way to ensure eternal peace of mind for everyone. 

He wrote many professional papers about the subject and tried to have them accepted into prestigious academic journals but his peers discounted his beliefs as frivolous and unrealistic—silly, in simpler terms. Dr. Grainger was disheartened by the constant scrutiny of his peers and so he decided to show them, first hand, how relaxing his hypnosis could be. 

During the biggest Psychology Association Conference in the country, Dr. Grainger was scheduled to give a speech. When he got on the stage in front of every important psychologist and psychiatrist in the world he used the opportunity to hypnotize them all! It was the largest mass-hypnosis in history and Dr. Grainger ensured that they would not soon wake from its effects! He suggested to all the hypnotized doctors that they should relax and let all their worries go. And that is precisely what they did.

Without any other psychologists in his way to debate his ideas or methods, Dr. Grainger started freely hypnotizing everyone he met…not just his patients. For example, when he went to buy a train ticket he would hypnotize the ticket seller. When he ate at a restaurant he hypnotized the waiter. He would find ways to hypnotize people he met on elevators or in lines at the supermarket. Within a month he had hypnotized most of the city!

In Dr. Grainger’s mind he was doing everyone a tremendous favor…but he was actually creating even more disorder and chaos. When he hypnotized people and told them to relax his suggestion worked a bit too well. No one cared about anything! Everyone stopped going to work so all jobs from bus drivers to chefs to stock market brokers saw a rapid decline in employees. The quality of life in society started to go downhill since people who were not hypnotized had trouble doing everyday things like shopping or going to the movies because many of the stores and locations were closed by hypnotized owners!

Of course, no one had any idea who was behind this hypnotism. Newspaper reporters who remained unaffected dubbed the phenomenon as being the work of the “Sand Man” since all the afflicted persons were walking around as if they were trapped in a dream. Finally, Mayor Williams begged me to help him find the culprit.

I admit that it was tough work. I had never heard of the “Sand Man” villain and so I had no visuals or imagery to focus on that would allow my somewhat psychic mind to give me an inkling to where he might be. I finally decided that the best thing to do was to find someone who had been hypnotized and look directly into their eyes. By doing so, my psychic powers would likely be able to form a slight image in my mind of what the Sand Man actually looked like. 

I had to find three affected people before I could be fairly certain of who the man I was looking for was. I found all three afflicted people lying in the grass at a park, starting up at the sky without a care in the world…despite the fact that it was starting to rain and they were in danger of catching a cold. The first one was a young girl, when I looked in her eyes I got a strong feeling that the man I was seeking had a gray beard. The second person was an middle aged man who gave me the feeling that the Sand Man had a the initials “L.G.” The last person was an old woman and she gave me the strongest clue. When I looked at her I learned that the Sand Man was a doctor—a psychiatrist. 

From there it was easy, I simply Googled all the psychiatrists in the city with the initials “L.G.” It didn’t take me long to find Dr. Lucas Grainger and the address of his office. Unsurprisingly, when I first got there he was not in but I knew he was bound to return eventually. I waited for a good two hours before he finally showed up. When he exited the elevator and headed toward his office he was smiling widely and seemed extremely pleased with himself. 

It was obvious that he never expected to see me waiting for him. When he saw me sitting in the hallway he first looked shocked, then horrified. He tried to run but I jumped up and snatched him.
“No!” he screamed dramatically. “You don’t understand!”
“And what don’t I understand?” I goaded.
“My work!” Dr. Grainger screeched. “I have no idea how you found me or how you got in here but I know who you are! The Mayor must have sent you! I’m not a bad guy though, I’m helping people! Can’t you see that?! People are happier because of me! Everyone is completely relaxed!” 
I immediately realized that Dr. Grainger truly had no idea about the negative impacts of his hypnosis. 
“I think we need to take a little field trip,” I declared right before I picked Dr. Grainger up and flew out of the office window with him.

At first he kicked and screamed quite a lot; obviously unused to flying except in a plane. Yet he seemed to get used to it quickly enough, especially when I took him to the park and showed him how many relaxed people were lying on the grass totally unmindful of the storm clouds above them. I showed him the closed down stores and restaurants and the buses and taxis that no one cared to operate…I even took him to the Emergency Room which was dangerously understaffed. 

“My goodness!” Dr. Grainger exclaimed. “I had no idea my work was having this kind of downside! I never intended for it to be this way!”
“You used hypnosis as a way of getting people to forget and ignore their troubles—not face them and work through them for a truly successful resolution,” I replied. “Even worse, you hypnotized people who didn’t even come to you for your services!” 
“I’m sorry! Please forgive me!” Dr. Grainger begged. “I can fix it, I swear! Just please promise not to put me in prison! I never meant to hurt anyone!” 

I knew that his words were true. Even though Dr. Grainger had done something harmful his mistake had been honest and derived from concern, not malice. I also knew that he was an excellent psychiatrist and I trusted him to be a man of his word. And so I spent the next several hours flying around with him—because it is much easier to travel by flying than any other type of transportation—and finding people that he has hypnotized. As easily as he had made them relax, Dr. Grainger made them revert back to their old selves…although quite wet and very confused! 

By the end of the day most of the victims had been turned back to normal and I flew Dr. Grainger to Mayor Williams so he could apologize to him in person. From that day forward Dr. Grainger gave up on hypnotism and turned his professional interests to the relaxing properties of Yoga and Zen!