Why are doctors such liars?

I had a cortisone shot in my foot today. It’s the second time I have received one of these shots. I have enough problems with needles already, but separate from my fear, these shots legitimately hurt like hell.

But your doctor is likely to tell you otherwise.  For reasons that I do not understand, doctors and dentists insist on telling me that something will not be painful when it is. Rather than using words like pain or hurt, they replace them with falsehoods like discomfort and pressure and a little pinch.

The problem with these lies is that when you tell me that the cortisone shot will not hurt and then it hurts like hell, I assume that something has gone terribly wrong and I begin to panic.

Today I was told that I would “feel some pressure,” but thankfully, I knew better. I told the doctor that the last shot hurt like hell and expected the same from this one, and I was not mistaken.

But had this been my first cortisone shot, today’s procedure would have been much worse for me. The unexpected pain would have been followed by images of the needle breaking in my foot, detaching from the syringe or the injecting of unintentional air bubbles into my foot.

All I am asking for is a little honesty. Even a statement like “This might hurt” is better than a lie about a pinch or some discomfort.

A pinch is what my daughter does to my cheeks.

Discomfort happens when I am stuck in traffic and need a restroom.

No one deserves to be surprised by pain in the doctor’s or dentist’s office, especially as a metal object is being inserted into your body.

The Golden Rule: Complete and total nonsense

I recently made the assertion that the Golden Rule, the Biblical admonition to do onto others as you would have done onto you, is an ineffective and nonsensical means by which a person should live his or her life. I was in a conversation with a group of educational leaders at the time, and I am relatively certain that their reactions to this statement fell along one of three distinct lines:

1. Matt is an idiot.
2. Matt likes to say things to make people angry.
3. Matt is an idiot who likes to say things that make people angry.

Suffice it to say that whatever their reaction was, no one initially agreed with me.

Yes, I may be an idiot who likes to make people angry at times, but my assertion in regards to The Golden Rule is correct. “The foundation of Christianity and most major religions” (as one person described the Golden Rule to me) possesses a flaw that makes it utterly useless.

The flaw is this:

In reality, we do not treat people as we would want to be treated, nor should we. We treat people as we perceive they want to be treated, and this is is often entirely different than the way we actually want to be treated.

For example, I know that when my wife has a problem, she would like me to listen intently and empathize with her plight. She is like most women in this respect. She wants to be heard. She wants to know that I am on her side. She wants to believe that I understand how she feels.

She may ultimately want me to help her solve the problem, but I know that any proposed solution is secondary and possibly not required at all. Sometimes a problem has no solution, yet she will still want to talk about it with me. As long as she knows that I am listening and I care, she is content with my response.

My response to a problem is entirely different. If I have chosen to discuss a problem with my wife or one of my friends, it is because I have reached the point where I need help in finding a solution. If a problem has no solution, I am unlikely to ever mention it to anyone.

Many men handle problems similarly. If a male friend calls me to discuss a problem, I know that he is not looking to be heard. He is not seeking empathy. He is calling me with the expectation that I will offer an immediate array of possible solutions. In most cases, I do not need to empathize or even care about my friend’s problem. I need not think that the problem is worthy of discussion, just as long as I have a solution to offer.

If I were to apply The Golden Rule to the way in which I discuss my wife’s problems with her, my response would not be well received. In this case, I cannot treat my wife as I would want to be treated, because our needs, like the needs of most men and women, are entirely divergent.

Situations like this happen all the time. In fact, if The Golden Rule was actually a valid moral code, human beings would be required to treat every person in their lives in only one way:

The way they would want to be treated.

Allowances would no longer need to be made for differences in personality, sensitivity, sex, age or personal background. In a world in which we treat people in a way that we would want to be treated, everyone would be equal in our eyes in every respect.

Everyone would be us.

Admittedly, it would make for a significantly simpler world. The need for nuance, grace and  sensitivity would be gone. Every decision would be based solely upon our own personal preference. You would simply ask yourself what you might want in a given situation and make that your modus operandi, regardless of who you were dealing with or the context of the situation.

For example, I like to be spoken to in a direct and honest manner. My closest friends know this and are able to say things to me that might hurt the feelings of others. But this is how I prefer to be treated. I find this method most effective for me.

In a world that demanded adherence to The Golden Rule, I would be required to speak to people similarly, even if I knew that doing so would  hurt some people’s feelings and cause them to feel uncomfortable around me.

I am quite certain of this because there was a time in my life when I practiced The Golden Rule in this regard, and it resulted in a great deal of animosity toward me. I was stupid and arrogant and lacking in nuance, and the results were not good.

The Golden Rule caused me a lot of trouble in my youth.

The actual Golden Rule should read like this:

Treat others in a way that they would want to be treated.

Thankfully, this is how most of us actually live our lives, even as we espouse our belief in this flawed, archaic rule.

Storm troopers with iPhones

Want a convenient, simple want to charge your iPhone on the go?

How about this? 

It’s called AIRE. It’s a device that allows the user to utilize the force of his or her breath to charge an iPhone.

Yes, it requires you to look like a Storm Trooper, but hey, at least you’ll still be able to text your friends when you can’t find an available electrical outlet. 

Not that you’ll have many friends if you start wearing one of these.

And it would be perfect in an apocalypse. While fleeing from zombies, you could simultaneously be charging your iPhone.  

 

He ruined my iPhone.

A friend, Tony, was asking about apps for his new iPad. I asked if he finally got rid of his featureless phone and purchased an iPhone as well.

His response made it difficult for me to continue to love my iPhone:

Whenever making a purchasing decision, I try to look at the long range cost, or in this case, how much additional savings I would have by NOT doing it. In this case, $720 (the yearly cost of an iPhone data plan) at 5% return (conservative 10.1% long term market) for 20 years is $24,000. There are just too many purchases with long tails, which is why I own Verizon stock (5.17% dividend) but not the service. Just a basic phone.

I hate when my friends start sounding like grownups. 

When it comes to a pregnant woman’s size, ladies, please just shut the hell up.

New rule (though it shouldn't be necessary) and a rule I teach my fifth graders every year: No more commenting on a pregnant woman's physical appearance.

If my wife comes home with one more story of some idiot woman (and yes, it is always a woman) commenting on her size, I’m going to personally hunt that woman down and compose a treatise on every one of her physical imperfections.

Most recent was the woman in Starbucks who asked Elysha how many weeks along she was and then remarked that even when she was pregnant with twins, she didn’t think she was ever that big.

The woman should be forbidden from ever entering a Starbucks again. She probably shouldn’t be allowed in public anymore.

But there have been plenty of others.

There was the woman who asked Elysha if she is much larger during this pregnancy than her previous one.

There are the hordes of attention-seeking narcissists who love to tell pregnant women about how little weight they gained during their own pregnancies and how quickly and easily they shed those extra few pounds after the delivery.

There are the women who mistake pregnant women for walking, talking carnival games, trying to guess how far along they are and always guessing too far.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Elysha averages about one insensitive comment per week, and these can come from friends, coworkers, family members and even complete strangers, who for reasons that escape me see a pregnant woman and feel the need to immediately engage in conversation.

My advice:

Just shut the hell up. All of you. Stop commenting on a pregnant woman’s physical appearance completely. I’d like to say that compliments are still permitted, but I feel like you’ve exercised such poor judgment already that you cannot be trusted to offer a compliment without accidentally insulting the woman at the same time.

So just shut up completely.

And yes, I am certain that in all of human history, men have made these type of dumb ass comments as well, but of the eight recently pregnant women who I polled over the past two days, all reported that comments like these, while entirely too frequent, are never made by men.

Men learned a long time ago to never comment on a woman’s size.

Take a page from our playbook, ladies, and shut the hell up.

Seriously.

You can’t take back slut.

This week’s Slate DoubleX Gabfest discussed how Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law Student who was called a “slut” by Rush Limbaugh, might be “the new standard bearer for sex-positive feminism.”

In the podcast, the notion of taking back the word slut is mentioned, much the same way the homosexual community has taken back the word queer or parts of the African American community have taken back the N word.

But this line of reasoning is flawed and stupid. I can’t tell you how much it annoyed me.  

The homosexual community was able to take back queer because at worst, queer means “odd or different.” The definition of the word is not a problem for the gay community because it does not possess any strong negative connotations. In many ways, the actual definition of the word has ceased to matter to the gay community. The word queer had become a signifier for gay (this definition can actually be found in the dictionary), so taking it back merely meant stripping the word of its negativity without any need to change the word’s actual meaning.   

Taking back the N word was similar. Though it is so vile that I hesitate to use it on this blog, the word, by pure definition, is a derogatory signifier for a specific race of race of people. It is hateful and offensive, but it has no other meaning other than to signify African Americans.  Taking back the word did not require the African American community to change the definition of the word. They only needed to strip the word of its negative connotation.

But the word slut has a definition, and it is not a good one.  A slut is “a slovenly or promiscuous woman.”

Synonyms for the word include trollop, strumpet, harlot and streetwalker.

This is not a mere signifier of the word woman, nor does it describe a woman who uses birth control regularly (as Limbaugh implied) or engages in regular sex. Instead, it describes a person (usually a woman but not always) who lacks discrimination and/or judgment when choosing sexual partners. It speaks to a person’s standards for choosing a sexual partner and the number of sexual partners. Taking back the word slut not only means stripping the word of a negative connotation but also changing the definition as well.

Doing so would be akin to bald men taking back the word bald or short women taking back the word short. These words have have actual definitions. They describe a specific type of person in the same way that the word slut describes a specific type of behavior.

Slut is a word that possesses negative connotations because it describes behavior that is generally considered less than admirable. No one stole the word for nefarious purposes. It is and always has been a signifier for a person who has sex with a large number of people absent any thought or consideration.

In this way, it is actually a rather useful word. It effectively describes a type of person. Though it is often used pejoratively, that does not make the word vile or offensive, unless you are an idiot like Rush Limbaugh.    

As the father of a three-year old girl, I would prefer that she grow up in a world where slut has not been taken back for the sake of feminism.

Seriously. We don’t need it.

Jessica Gross, one of the podcast hosts, describes a time in middle school when she and her friends would jokingly refer to one another as sluts, unaware of what the word even meant.

I’d prefer that my daughter grow up without anyone calling her a slut, in jest or otherwise.

Times Square: The place that New Yorkers love to hate

I get annoyed when I hear New Yorkers complain about Times Square, which they seem to do a lot.

Yes, it’s crowded, and yes, tragically, many of the people crowding the streets are not New Yorkers, so they are not nearly as enlightened as the rest of you. They look up a lot. They pose for photographs in front of things that you find benign and commonplace. They crowd street corners and fail to act quickly when the light changes. They wear colors other than gray and black.

I know. It’s terrible. Inexcusable, really.

Of course, all of those people are bringing dollars to your city. They support your vibrant theater district and fill your hotel rooms and eat in your restaurants and buy your hats and tee shirts. Cities would kill for the kind of tourism that Times Square promotes.

It’s also not nearly as bad as you want us to think you think it is.  

Get over yourselves.

Does the television weatherman serve any useful purpose anymore? I think not.

“Is this the end to the mild weather? Find out at 11:00.”

This is what I heard tonight on television during an exceptionally rare viewing of live, non-sports related television.

Actually, that’s not even true. We were watching The Office, but it had actually aired about an hour earlier. But this is as close as Elysha and I get to live TV these days, so the weatherman’s words at least made sense for once. They actually matched the weather outside. 

When I heard the guy, who looked about seventeen years old, I thought:

Really, dude? You think that tease that works anymore? Find out at 11:00? How about, “Find out in 11 seconds by checking the app on my phone or on the Internet?” Does anyone actually wait until 11:00 PM to listen to a weatherman read the weather to you when you have the forecast at your fingertips at all times?

I hope not. I’d hate to think anyone is encouraging him.

Mindy Kaling’s 13 Rules for Guys

Mindy Kaling’s memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me has a chapter that lists and explains Kaling’s 13 Rules for Guys. I liked the list immediately because of its number. Thirteen. Not ten. Not a even dozen. Not twenty. The decidedly un-round number thirteen. I never trust a list that contains a round number of items. It’s too damn convenient. It probably means that one or two quality items were left off the list or one or two less-than-worthy items were added to the list to achieve the round number.

Thirteen is a great list number. Ten is the worst.

As for Kaling’s recommendations, I currently adhere to or would be willing to adopt to most but have serious objections to a few.

For the record, Elysha supports every item on the list without reservation. She and Mindy Kaling could easily be best friends. ________________________________________

1. Buy a well-fitting pea coat from J. Crew (and get it cleaned once a year).

I could do this. I kind of like a pea coat.

2. Have a signature drink.

Does Diet Coke count?

Actually, if I’m drinking a cocktail, I like a kamikaze a lot, but this sounds like a drink for someone celebrating their twenty-first birthday. Almost never drinking alcohol makes this a tough rule to follow.

3. Own several pairs of dark-wash straight-leg jeans.

I used to know several pairs of these jeans, and then I took six inches off my waist, so I have been slowly restocking my wardrobe. Emphasis on slowly. I currently own two pairs, though only one pair is actually my size.

4. Wait until all women have gotten on or off an elevator before you get on or off.

I follow this rule unless it makes things exceedingly awkward.

5. When you think a girl looks pretty, say it and make it about her (i.e., “You look so sexy in those boots,” not “Those boots are really cool.”)

I think I do this as well, though I rarely compliment the physical appearance of anyone except my wife. This is partly because I think my wife is prettier than everyone else and partly because I am not a very visual person and fail to notice appearance. I also refrain from commenting on a student’s physical appearance, and this policy tends to bleed into the rest of my life as well.

6. Avoid asking if someone needs help in a kitchen or at a party–just start helping.

I am often the first person at the sink, ready to clean the dishes. While I’d like people to think that this is an act of kindness and politeness, it is probably the result of my years of working in a restaurant and my need to clean as I go.

7. Have one great cologne that’s not from the drugstore.

Really? I smell fine already.

8. Your girlfriend’s sibling or parents might be totally nuts, but always defend them.

Elysha feels that I do an adequate job in this regard. I was not as convinced. I tend to come down on the side of logic and reason rather than loyalty or obligation, but I’ll take her word for it.

9. Keihl’s for your skin, Bumble and Bumble for your hair.

Apparently Elysha gave me a bottle of Keihl’s when we started dating. I have no recollection of this. Nor do I think I need this product. Or any product.

I don’t even use shaving cream. Old fashioned soap works just fine.

I have no idea what Bumble and Bumble is, but I have not put anything in my hair other than shampoo for more than two decades. I don’t think I need to start now.

10. Guys only need two pairs of shoes: a nice pair of black shoes and a pair of Chuck Taylors.

I own two nice pairs of black shoes but no Chuck Taylors. I didn’t even know what a Chuck Taylor was. I own sneakers, which I wear almost every day to work simply because of the nature of my job, but I can’t see myself wearing these things.

They don’t seem to have any support and look like they would last about four seconds before falling apart. When I was a teenager, I owned an actual pair of Converse sneakers that looked a lot like these, so why would I want to start wearing a sneaker that is an imitation of something I actually wore as a kid?

11. Bring wine or chocolate to everything.

I’m more than willing to begin doing this, but wouldn’t it begin to seem a little like pandering after a while?

12. Get a little jealous now and again, even if you’re not strictly a jealous guy.

I don’t understand the purpose of this, nor does jealousy come easy to me.

13. Don’t shave your chest hair.

The vanity required in order to do something like this is beyond me.

Why learning to write well matters.

There is a policy in my classroom that requests submitted in writing receive greater consideration than those that are not. Also, the quality of the writing has a direct impact on the likelihood of a request being granted. As a result, I receive some very serious letters from very serious students with very serious requests, and in most cases, I try to at least meet these students halfway.

I have adopted this policy for several reasons, but primarily, I want my students to understand that regardless of the future that they envision for themselves, they will need to be able to write effectively, and that writing effectively can be a tremendous asset to a person regardless of his or her career choice.

Conversely, the inability to write effectively can be a great determent to a person and his or her career.

Case in point:

Here is a response that my wife received from a local museum that recently changed its policy in regards to member benefits.

__________________________________________

Mrs. Dicks,

My apologies for the email response to your phone call. As you can imagine, you’re not the only member with questions, and responding by email gives me the opportunity to give you more details.

Of all the problems with this response, this paragraph annoys me the most because it makes no sense. Why is responding via email any more conducive to providing a customer with details than a phone conversation? Is the writer implying that the mere act of writing confers special powers of information dissemination that a phone call cannot?

Thank your for valuing your membership with The Children’s Museum, apart from of the additional benefits.  We will automatically place you in our new membership program, at the level for your family size (the Scientist $125 level), and send a new card and materials in approximate six weeks.  In the meantime, you can use your current card to visit the museum.  We are also adding a benefit package of vouchers and discounts with the new membership program, a $35 value which is the same amount you paid for the Plus upgrade.  I would be happy to send that to you, if you like.

I had to read this paragraph three times in order to understand what was being said, and I’m still not entirely sure. There are obvious problems with the words your and approximate (which I have highlighted), and I am not sure what “apart from of the additional benefits” is supposed to mean, even if I remove the word of. It makes no sense. Regardless, three typos in a single paragraph is not acceptable.

You can still use the reciprocal admission at science centers and museums that participate in the ASTC program. (As always, call ahead if you are visiting an organization within 90 miles of The Children’s Museum, to see if they will accept your membership.) We are enforcing the 90 mile rule, which, for the most part, we hadn’t previously, but the decision on whether or not to enforce the rule is optional, and it is made by each organization.

I’m not a fan of the clunky way that the writer uses parenthesis when they really aren’t necessary, but it’s the last sentence that is the worst.  It contains a total of 35 words and five commas. FIVE.

We understand the confusion and concern this is causing, but it was a necessary financial decision, and one that was made very recently.

I have more confusion and concern over the quality of the writing in this email than any change made to the museum’s benefit package. If the museum is actually receiving as many inquires in regards to this policy change as they claim (and I believe they probably are, since the changes are considerable), you would expect them to have some kind of form letter ready that could be tweaked if needed. Or even better, perhaps someone with a modicum of writing ability could be placed in charge of responding to the flurry of inquiries that this change has generated, because this response is unprofessional and reprehensible.

I’ll be showing it to my students next week.  They’ll do a little editing and hopefully receive some reinforcement regarding the importance of writing well.

The problem with karma (and my completely realistic solution)

This is the problem with karma:

It offers no confirmation that the people who have wronged you in the past have been paid back sufficiently.

There are people in the world who deserve exceedingly harsh treatment from karma based upon actions they took against me in the past, and even though karma may have punished them already, I have no way of knowing.

Instead, I am left hoping that they were punished while I continue to plot my revenge.

I am a very patient man.

In addition, my oppressors have no way of connecting karma’s punishment to the crime. When their house burns down or they inexplicably gain 90 pounds, they have no way of knowing that these unfortunate occurrences are the result of their past treatment of me.

This kind of satisfaction is essential when getting even with someone, yet karma offers no mechanism for this to take place.

What we need is a machine in every household that issues a receipt when karma has evened a score. A slip of paper with the date, time, reason, and description of the punishment.

My receipt would let me know that karma has gotten even for me.  It would be something tangible that I could stick on my refrigerator and enjoy every time I reach in for a glass of milk or a piece of fruit.

My oppressors’ receipt would let them know that their suffering had been handed down by me via proxy. It would serve as a tangible reminder of their cowardly, underhanded and despicable actions and would make that all-important punishment-crime connection clear.

That would be the kind of karma that I could support.

I love my gym, but I can hardly vote for it as the best health and fitness center if it’s killing people

My gym, Big Sky, has been rated as the “Best Health and Fitness Center” since 2003 by the Hartford Advocate. I love Big Sky. I am actually a member of Bally’s as well, and in the past, I have been a member of two other health clubs in the area, so I can attest to the excellence of Big Sky. It is the cleanest, most modern, most well equipped gym that I have ever seen outside the movies.

Yesterday I was asked if I would be willing to participate in the Advocate’s online poll in order to ensure that Big Sky is the “Best Health and Fitness Center” in 2012 as well.

I declined.

When asked why, I explained that although I think Big Sky is the finest gym in the area, I could not in good conscious vote for it as the best health and fitness center.

In addition to its many amenities, Big Sky offers tanning to its members.  Four tanning rooms flank the hallway between the gym and the locker rooms, and not a day goes by when at least two are in use when I arrive.  Women enter and exit those rooms constantly (I am sure that there are men who use the tanning rooms, too, but in the two years that I have been a member, I have yet to see a single man do so), and every time I see one stepping into or out of a booth, I am shocked at their level of stupidity.

Seriously increasing your risk of cancer so that your skin can be slightly darker than the people around you strikes me as one of the most vain, insane and stupid things that a person can do. The fact that Big Sky offers this service to its members makes it impossible for me to vote for it as the best health and fitness center in the area.

Consider the reality:

It is highly probable that at least one, and probably many Big Sky’s members will someday die of skin cancer as a result of their daily tanning sessions.

Had I been asked to rate Big Sky as the best gym in the Hartford area, I would have happily done so.

But the best health and fitness center? I don’t think so.

Jesus Christ and these capital letters do not belong

This card has become the source of amusement for many because of Rick Santorum’s decision to quote Jesus Christ and the New Testament on a Hanukkah message designed for Jews. Then again, only about 0.3 percent of the South Carolinian population is Jewish, so maybe he was hoping that no one would notice.

Yes, this was a strange and fairly stupid decision.

And yes, I acknowledge that it is highly unlikely that Santorum played a hands-on role in the design of the actual card. But gaffs like this serve as an indication as to the quality of the organization that the candidate has built and is leading.

But I think an even more egregious error exists in the message at the bottom of the card:

May Your Hanukkah be bright. Peace to you this Holiday Season

Nothing annoys me more than random and improper capitalization.

While the words May, Hanukkah and Peace should be capitalized for obvious reasons, there is no reason to capitalize You, Holiday and Season. These words are seemingly capitalized at random, with no identifiable reason or purpose.

Furthermore, the first sentence ends with a period but the second does not.

More inconsistency.

Yes, it’s true that the use of a quote by Jesus Christ on a card directed to Jews makes no sense and is especially stupid in light of the Christian tone that Santorum strikes in his campaign, but the absence of basic copyediting demonstrates, at least to me, a lack of attention to detail that I find even more disturbing.

Then again, I am an author and not very religious, so perhaps I am sensitive in ways different than most.

The world is no less polite or civil today than in years past. You're just blind to the realities of history, technology, and memory.

I read a post on Roberta Trahan’s Idyll Conversation blog the other day that began with this:

How many of you have noticed, in recent years, the near extinction of such social courtesies as the hand-written thank-you note and willingly waiting your turn in line? How many of you are bothered by it? Well, it bothers me plenty. A couple of weeks ago, while waiting in the checkout lane at the grocery store, I was appalled when the person in front of me had the nerve to complain that the elderly lady ahead of him was taking the time to put her change in her wallet before moving out of his way. Really? Have we become so self-centered and accustomed to instant response that we have completely lost our sense of basic social pleasantries and caring for the feelings of others? I had to wonder.

Trahan is certainly not the first to express a sentiment like this. I actually hear it quite often.

I think it is nonsense every single time.

While I do not appreciate the lack of civility or the rudeness that exists in this world, I am fairly certain that it has existed in nearly equal measure for a very long time. I suspect that the opening sentence of Trahan’s piece could have just as easily been written by someone in 1902, 1912 or even 1972.

Do we really believe that ours is the first generation to bemoan the erosion of social courtesies?

Do we really believe that rudeness of this kind did not exist one hundred years ago?

After all, we don't know what civility looked like in 1912. We were not there to see it, and the amount of writing that exists from the era is scant in comparison to today.

Consider this: If you were standing in line in a grocery store in 1912 and witnessed the same display of rudeness that Trahan describes in her post, what could you do?

Tell a friend or two perhaps?  Share it with the members of your social club?  Tell the story at a family gathering?

Perhaps.

But how might you preserve this story so that I could read it today or even spread the story beyond your tiny social circle? There was no Facebook, Twitter, or blog to record the moment for posterity. Unless you wrote a diary and decided to include a description of the incident within its pages and then somehow manage to ensure the preservation of that diary for a century, how would we ever know that the incident ever took place?

I suspect that if we were to return to 1912, we would find the same kinds of rudeness and incivility that we experience today, as well as writers like Trahan bemoaning the “near extinction” social grace.

In fact, I suspect that there is more civility in the world today than ever before.

What about the civility and social courtesies experienced by African Americans, immigrants and other minorities? Even if hand-written-thank-you-cards were more prevalent years ago and grocery store lines were more pleasant and polite, do we really believe a society that embraced widespread, institutional racism and rampant homophobia was more civil than today?

How can we even begin to make this comparison?

But even if we were to exclude this kind of civility and discuss only those mentioned in Trahan’s post, do we really believe that our great grandparents went to their graves believing that their world was filled with the same degree of civility as the one that preceded it?

Or is it more likely that every generation, upon experiencing a lifetime of incivility and discourtesy, in concert with the human mind’s tendency to recall the negative more easily than the positive, eventually expresses a sentiment similar to Trahan’s?

Is it possible that we stand in line hundreds of times every month but only recall the one or two instances of rudeness?

Is it possible that as we get older, these one or two incidents begin piling up in our minds, when in reality, they represent a tiny fraction of the time actually spent standing in line?

Then we eventually reach an age in which this pile of memories is so large that we begin to bemoan the loss of civility in the world, when in reality, we experience civility and social courtesy every day. The vast majority of the lines in which we stand are perfectly civil. The vast majority of drivers on the road are courteous and polite. The vast majority of people thank us for our gifts.

We simply do not remember those moments, because they are so forgettable. So ordinary. So frequent, and therefore, so unnoticed.

I believe that the instinct to complain that today’s world is not as good as the one that preceded it is almost always short-sighted and flawed. Memory is at best unreliable, and at worst, deceiving.

Before you go shaking your fist at today’s world, remember that the generation before you probably did the same thing, for exactly the same reason.

No one needs this much room to poop.

These photos really don’t adequately capture the inexplicable enormity of this this public restroom. 

It’s bigger than my dining room. 

It might be bigger than any single room in my house.   

It’s big enough to fit two full-sized portraits on the wall.

It requires two emergency lighting apparatuses.  

Remove the toilet and sink and you’d have yourself a racquetball court. 

What the hell was the architect thinking?

 

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: A great movie tragically marred by Steven Spielberg's failure to engage in unprotected sex.

I’ve been watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind again.

I have always thought of this film as flawless.

Slate’s Bill Wyman recently watched all of Spielberg's films and rated Close Encounters of the Third Kind as one of Spielberg’s best.

While I still agree that the film is excellent, fatherhood has unexpectedly changed one component of the movie for me, and unfortunately, it’s a big one.

Richard Dreyfuss’ character, Roy, in case you don’t remember, is the protagonist whose brief encounter with alien spaceships leaves an image implanted in his mind of the location where the aliens intend to land and make contact with representatives of the US and world government (an unnamed mountain in Wyoming). There are hundreds of people who are implanted with the same vision throughout the world, but Roy is one of only two people who actual make it to the mountain and manage to dodge the military in order to witness the arrival of the aliens.

It turns out there is a reason why the aliens want Roy at the landing site:

They want to take him with them. Although there is a team of jumpsuit-clad, government-trained soldiers ready to go with the aliens, these military bozos are rejected by the aliens.

Instead, Roy is the only one permitted to go.

He does. He boards the ship and the film ends with it lifting off into outer space.

One problem: Roy is married with kids.

Even though the marriage seems to have been going well until Roy becomes fixated on his vision of the mountain, I’ll give him a pass on abandoning his wife, since she leaves with the kids when Roy’s obsession causes him to build a ten foot tall dirt model of the mountain in his living room.

It’s not much of a pass, but I’ll give him a pass.

But Roy also has two kids. Sons. Boys who will not only never see their father again but will never know where he went.

Prior to being a father, this detail washed over me without notice. But with children of my own, this plot point now looms large in the film, and it causes a character who is supposed to be likable, honorable and revered to be considerably less so in my eyes.

As Roy prepares to board the ship, the lead scientist turns to him and says, “I envy you.”

Sitting alone in my living room, I actually said aloud, “Don’t envy the bastard. He’s abandoning his children. Probably forever.”

It’s an example how how parenthood can change your perspective on life forever.

Spielberg was not married and did not have children in 1977 when Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released. He would not have children for another decade, so it’s likely that the prospect of children had not even entered his consciousness yet.

I can’t help but wonder if things might have been different for Dreyfuss’ character if Spielberg had children at the time he made the film. Roy’s sons could have easily been removed from the film entirely with nothing substantial lost in terms of the story.

I suspect that Spielberg had a blind spot in 1977, and that allowed him to send his protagonist to space while his protagonist’s family remained behind, utterly forgotten.

There isn’t a single moment in the film when Roy even thinks about the prospect of leaving his family.

In a 2007 interview, Spielberg confessed that if he had a chance to make this movie today, Dreyfuss’ character would never have abandoned his family to go to outer space.

Was Spielberg blind to this flaw in his film because he did not have children of his own?

I suspect so. I suspect that I might have done the same thing.

If asked if I would abandon my wife and daughter today in order to be one of the first human beings to visit an alien world, I would say no without having to think twice.

But if asked ten years ago, prior to my marriage and the birth of my daughter, if I would have considered abandoning a hypothetical family in order to make a historic visit to an alien world, I might have said yes. I can envision myself making arguments about the magnitude and scope of such a journey in comparison to the commonality and frequency of fatherhood and marriage.

And I would have been foolish and naive and wrong.

Just as I suspect Spielberg was in 1977 when he sent his protagonist into space, leaving a family behind.

Rage against the dying of the light, damn it.

Yeats once asked, "Why should not old men be mad?" In his final broadcast for A Point of View Clive James offers his answer.  With his granddaughter and her friends bouncing on the furniture, James looks back on his own childhood to a time when the modern world was at its worst and countless millions "died pointlessly for the fulfillment of idle political dreams." Thinking himself lucky to be able to grow old at all, let alone to do so in peace, James reflects:

There should be pride in it, that you behaved no worse. There should be gratitude, that you were allowed to get this far. And above all there should be no bitterness. The opposite, in fact. The future is no less sweet because you won't be there. The children will be there, taking their turn on earth. In consideration of them, we should refrain from pessimism, no matter how well founded that grim feeling might seem.

This passage is reproduced in James’ book A Point of View.

I think it is nonsense. Stupidity. I believe that this sentiment represents surrender.

I think Yeats is absolutely correct. Why should old men not be mad? Death sucks. Old age is only slightly better.

James calls for gratitude in old age and claims that the future will be no less sweet if I am not there. But James is wrong. The future will be decidedly less sweet without me.

It will be less sweet for me.

And while I would love to feel joy for the subsequent generations and their bright and promising futures, I can’t be joyous for anyone if I am dead.  There is no future for me once I am dead.

So how can the damn thing be sweet?

Yes, I realize that this is all based upon my narrow, relatively minuscule perspective, and that the world will move on just fine once I am gone, but my perspective counts for a lot. It’s the basis for my feelings and my beliefs. If I don’t exist, I don’t have any perspective at all, minuscule or otherwise.

Nonexistence is the worst.

I have said it before: I don’t trust anyone who isn’t afraid of death.

Give me Yeats or Dylan Thomas any day. These accepting-of-death types annoy the hell out of me. Life is tragically short. How someone like James can find pride and gratitude in his shuffle off this mortal coil is beyond me.

Icky

Clara celebrated her third birthday on Wednesday with a chocolate cupcake and a handful of presents. 

In my continued series of posts from Greetings Little One leading up to her birthday, another tidbit from the the birth of my daughter, originally written on January 28, 2009.

Today will be the last day for these reminiscent posts.

______________________________________________

Our experience at Hartford Hospital has been nearly perfect. The nurses have been extraordinary and the care that you and Mommy have received has been top notch. In fact, in the five days that we have been here, I have only one complaint.

During Mommy’s caesarian section, I found myself sitting on a stool behind the surgical screen, adjacent to your mother’s head. In this position, I was able to look at Mommy and comfort her while being spared the gore of major surgery.

That is, until I noticed the suction hose running to the right of her head. As I was stroking Mommy’s forehead and whispering assuring words into her ear, I saw the clear tube fill with a red liquid, and occasionally, small bits of fleshy matter.

Little bits of Mommy being sucked away.

"Don’t look right," I warned your mother, and she didn’t. Unfortunately, the tube was in my direct line of sight and I couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of it from time to time.

In fact, one of the doctors who took our photograph managed to capture an image of the tube in the background. See for yourself:

In the future, perhaps the surgical team could find a different path for the suctioned particulates of a mother’s uterus.

5 amazing fantastic things that I stupidly misjudged or prejudged initially

In the spirit of admitting that you can be exceedingly stupid at times (a quality I wish more people possessed), here is a list of five things that I initially misjudged or prejudged incorrectly. 1. Wait Wait Don't Tell Me: My wife insisted that I would love this NPR program for years, but I refused to listen, explaining that I have never liked game shows.

“But it’s not a game show,” my wife would say, and I would dismiss her claim.

Finally, I agreed to give it a try, just so I could say, “I told you so.”

Today, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me is one of my most cherished podcasts.

2. Audiobooks: Back in 1990, my best friend and roommate began listening to audiobooks on cassette and suggested I do the same. I told him that listening to a book was stupid. I thought that it was akin to cheating. I suspected that recorded books were meant only for morons who could not read. As a person who hoped to one day write novels, I couldn't imagine spending my days listening to the great works of American literature through a set of headphones.

Three years went by before I gave my first audiobook a try, and only then because I was on a road trip with a friend who happened to be listening to a book.

Today I listen to more books than I read, not because I don’t read often, but because I am almost always listening to something, and that something is most often an audiobook.

3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: My friend, Coog, suggested that I watch this television show back in 1998, but I thought it sounded stupid and childish. After much debate, I finally agreed to watch one episode and immediately confirmed my suspicions.

It was stupid.

A year went by, during which time I continued to read and hear about the greatness of this show, so one summer day, when I wasn’t feeling well, I decided to give it one more try.

I loved it. And I understood something fundamental about the show that I had missed in my first viewing:

It’s supposed to be funny.

Serious and dramatic as well, but funny for sure.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer went on to become my favorite television show of all time, and ten years later, it became my wife’s favorite show of all time, too.

4. Snow pants: My friend, Shep, began wearing snow pants to Patriots games three years ago in order to stay warm. I told him that snow pants were for little kids and people engaging in winter sports like skiing. I told him to man up.

After freezing my ass off for two years while watching Shep sit comfortably in frigid winter temperatures, I conceded that snow pants may have merit.  Shep and my friend, Gary, purchased me a pair for my birthday last year, and I was decidedly warmer during this past NFL season.

5. Brie: I used to think that brie was a disgusting half-cheese-like-substance that looked awful and probably tasted twice as bad. Since there were almost always other cheese options available, I avoided brie and never even gave it a try.

Then I was having dinner at a friends a few years ago and my wife insisted that I try just a little bit.

I was hooked. The rind is disgusting, but the cheese itself is fantastic.  I couldn’t believe that I’d missed out on the greatness for brie for over 30 years.

Underwhelming. No, more than that. Weird.

If this man were the president of my university, I would strongly advise against producing any future video messages. This message does not inspire confidence.

It might inspire me to write a poem about a deer trapped in the headlights of an oncoming freight train.

Or perhaps to write a short story about a man who suffers from an inability to blink his eyes naturally.

But it does not convince me that he is the man to lead Penn State out of this recent scandal and into the future.

The whole thing just looks strange.

Some people aren’t suited for video. Dr. Rodney A. Erickson would appear to be one of these people.

The inability to convey a message via video does not make him a bad leader.  It’s the decision to post the video after previewing it that makes me question his judgment.