JAN. 2, 2006
TAKING MR. MONK TO THE THEATER

My name is Natalie Teeger and I'm Adrian Monk's assistant. If you live in San Francisco, you may know him. He's a brilliant detective who is great at solving murders but calls 911 every time a bird poops on my windshield.

I don't know exactly what Monk's problem is. He's got some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder that I'm told doesn't qualify him as a nut, but it's certainly making me crazy. And I'm a single mother raising a 12-year-old daughter, so it takes a lot to stress me out.

I can't afford therapy on what Monk pays me and I have no medical benefits so I've started this blog as a way to keep my sanity without spending $100 an hour. Who knows, I may even write a book some day.

You think I'm exaggerating? Okay, here's an example of what I've got to put up with:

The other day, Monk didn't have a case to work on and I didn't relish the idea of spending the day sitting around his house sorting out imperfect Wheat Chex from his boxes of breakfast cereal ("It will be fun," he said. "You'll feel like a kid again.") Instead, I talked him into going to this revival theatre in Haight-Asbury that was showing classic Hitchcock movies.

Monk insisted on bringing a plastic seat cover because there was no way he was sitting on something a thousand other people had sat on before him. He also brought disinfectant and delousing spray. And gloves. And baggies to put his gloves in. And gloves to handle the baggies with the gloves in them.

It wasn't easy getting all that stuff past the ticket-taker, but I flashed a smile and a little cleavage ( very little ... I don't have much to spare) and we got in.

Once we were in the theatre, Monk had to sit dead center in an even-numbered seat. Luckily, the center seat wasn't an odd number or he might have asked me to move the entire row.

Just when I thought we were home free, the movie turned out to be "The 39 Steps." The title alone was enough to drive Monk out of the theatre. But we stayed. It was everyone else who fled, irritated by his incessant whining about the title of the movie and the fact he gave away the whodunit it in the first five minutes.

All the cleavage my Wonderbra could muster couldn't convince the manager not to throw us out.

But my ordeal didn't end there.

Monk didn't sleep all night. He was too upset by the odd number in the title of the movie. He spent the next day on the phone with Universal Studios trying to convince them they had a moral obligation to add another step to the title.

So, the next time you think your job is tough, think about mine.