FRiENDS OF DOROTHY

- There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no pla...

The couple of case workers from Kansas City's Mental Health Home Assessment Facility didn't doubt the veracity of the homily, but they had other things on their professional minds.

- Yes, Ms Garland so you say, but tell us more about your relationship with the lizard. Where did you...? Attempted to ask the senior case worker.

- Wizard! Not lizard. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

- Ah! The Wizard. That's the man who was going to help you get back home you say.

A helpful interjection from the male case worker calmed his client somewhat. In any event, Ms Garland was more inclined to defer to the natural authority of the older man, even though he was junior. Affirmative action hadn't yet reached Kansas.

- Yes, he was a warm and gentle man.

- When you say warm, there was physical contact? I mean, did he ever touch you Dorothy?

- Oh no. You see you don't really meet the wizard in the flesh. He's in our hearts, like Jesus.

- Has Jesus ever spoken with you?

- No, but I did speak with the Lion. Such a scardy cat. You know one time he...

- The Wizard kept a lion?

- Oh no! I met the Lion on the road...

- Ah! The yellow road. This was how the Wizard controlled you.

- I don't know about that. But there wasn't just me and the Lion. There was Mr Scarecrow and the Tin Man. We were a group of four.

- Ah! There was a network, a ring of men involved in the abduction. I mean, when you went away to ... er... Ost?

- Oz! The Land of Oz! You guys don't listen. You think I'm making all this up!

Ms Garland pouted and looked down at her feet. She missed her ruby slippers. If she had them on still, she might've clicked her heels thrice and wished her way back to Oz. But it just wouldn't work with grandpa’s green rubber boots.

And another thing... Dorothy swore the lady case worker's face had a greenish tinge to it. And her nose. It was awfully hooked.

As for the case worker, she had once been a staunch opponent of cosmetic surgical procedures. She was modifying her position somewhat these days. Words like empowerment and gender realignment buzzed around her head. She swatted them away with her file, with the end of her papermate flexigrip, she scratched the side of her bent nose. Taking in a deep breath, she nodded managerially at her junior and made eye contact with her client.

Her male colleague had wanted to dwell on the client's insecurities vis-à-vis the wicked witch characterisation, but he deferred to hierarchy. In any event, the winged monkeys scared him.

- Tell us about this Tin Man. He was the first? By that we mean he was the first one you encountered on your journey of initiation. On the yellow expressway.

- The yellow brick road!

- Did he photograph or film you Dorothy? Do you remember?

- There were cameras everywhere lady. It was a movie. I keep telling you.

She did the first click of the rubber boots by accident as she moved forward to better remonstrate with the case worker. The second she did as a half-conscious follow-up. But the third was deliberate and hopeful. And it worked. Dorothy was back on the MGM soundstages (October 7, 1938) before she knew where she was, and definitely before you could write down persecution ideation involved in residual type episodic paranoid schizophrenia, the last clause of the concluding sentence of the home assessment team's report.

Neither case worker mentioned Dorothy's dematerialisation to each other, or anyone else for that matter, ever. But sometimes the man puts on the green boots and clicks thrice hopefully.

Somewhere over the rainbow way up high...