In this turn-of-the-century photograph, the Wurlitzki brothers demonstrate the maxim "The family that tandem bikes together maybe doesn't hate each other as much as they otherwise might."
Dr. O’Connell: So, how have things been since last we talked?
Mitch: Great. Really great.
Kathy: Fucking horrible. And that he says Great confirms my long-held suspicions that he is either (a) A huge and convincing liar, (b) A complete sociopath, (c) The most oblivious motherfucker who ever lived, or (d) All the above.
Dr. O’Connell: Kathy, let’s try to work with I statements.
Kathy: I am wildly unhappy with the man I made the mistake of marrying.
Mitch: Kathy, we’ve had so much fun tandem bicycling together. It’s brought our relationship to a whole new level. Both of us, working together as one, meeting life’s obstacles, powering over or around them…
Dr. O’Connell: So Mitch, what I hear you saying is that you feel the tandem bicycling has brought you closer together.
Mitch: It has.
Dr. O’Connell: And Kathy, what I hear you saying…
Kathy: I don’t think you’re hearing what I am saying at all. Which I don’t find unusual in the slightest, because it’s a sensation I have pretty much every day of my life with the man I married. And it’s difficult to explain, but I will try, just so I can hear it out loud: I get the sense sometimes that I am crazy, because the interior truth I hold to be true is countermanded daily by the reality I experience in my home, and the fear I have that this may be the case keeps me from voicing this outside the confines of my own skull, which means that there are only two versions of reality, the interior and exterior, and because the interior is accessible only to me, the exterior is necessarily stronger, more insistent, and thus I am ever-more convinced and terrified that I am crazy.
Dr. O’Connell: What you’ve described, if I’m hearing you right, sounds like a pretty vicious cycle.
Kathy: You know what’s a pretty vicious cycle? Going through the woods with a man you hate on a goddamned tandem mountain bike.
Dr. O’Connell: Wait. I’m sorry. Did you say tandem mountain bike?
Mitch: Yes. What else would it be?
Kathy: I hate the goddamned bike. I hate the goddamned bike. There. Out in the world. For you to stick in your tailpipe for all I care, Mitch.
Mitch: Don’t you say that about the mountain bike. None of this is the mountain bike’s fault.
Dr. O’Connell: Mitch, I clearly suggested that the two of you buy a road tandem bike. That’s challenge enough for couples in your situation. Mountain tandem? Were you not listening at all?
And he makes me ride in back, always. Which I find extremely chauvanistic.
Kathy: The next thing you want to do together, Mitch? You can do it together by yourself.
Dr. O’Connell: Kathy, I hear you. I want you to know that I hear you.
