I had an acquaintance email me because of a rather cheeky comment I made to his wife, who was a sorority sister of mine in college. She had gotten swine flu, and I learned later was wrestling with her pregnancy issues. I don't know if she was actually pregnant, or was trying to get pregnant, but she was sick with swine flu wondering if she should take Tamiflu or one of the other anti-virals. At the time of my comment, I didn't know if she was really having complications. My comment was something along the lines of "I'll take swine flu, you take Afghanistan." I made this comment mainly because of the many somewhat medieval diseases that are present here: polio, TB and malaria, to name a few. Ones like TB that don't go away and are highly communicable are the most scary to me. Once you get TB, you've got it for good, pretty much. You can die a miserable, long death similarly to Doc Holliday with your final words being "well I'll be damned. This is funny." Of course in the more civilized world which we like to think we live in, we are shielded from most of these illnesses. Malaria, which kills millions of people a year has practically been eradicated from the United States. And then swine flu comes along and everybody is freaking out back home.
From my point of view, it is very irrational. My acquaintance's argument was that I was saying nobody was allowed, in my book, to be worried about anything, which clearly, I wasn't saying. But with the threats facing my health in this country, I'm seriously not worried about swine flu. From what I've read since, 4,000 die of normal flu every year in the US, but nobody has been worrying about that little statistic. A lot of people won't get flu shots or other vaccinations because of the 1 in a million chance that somebody might have a reaction. There is a reason why the diseases were eradicated in the US: vaccinations. School age children were required to get vaccinations to go to kindergarden. Sure, I understand that it would suck if my son or daughter had a reaction to a vaccine (a one in a million chance) and if that happened I might say to myself, "I should have been playing the lottery because my odds would have been good." I know. But what if my son or daughter got polio? One of my Dad's friend's had polio and you can clearly see that one of his legs is almost half as thick as the other. Needless suffering and pain and debilitation. Sure, when my Dad's friend was a kid in the 1940's they didn't have the vaccines. But now they do. I'm sure he wished he had it. What I don't understand is why people get so upset about people regulating their child's health, but not about how their taxes support clearly failing businesses with stimulus money, but that's for another rant.
Another anecdote on a similar subject happened while I was in Paris with the Baylor in Paris program. There was another student that worried constantly about toilet seats. She even carried around toilet seat covers to use around Paris when she needed to pee or whatever. Funny enough, her fear was of STDs. Sexually Transmitted Diseases. When she told me of her fears, I didn't say what was on my mind, but it was something along the lines of "Sexually Transmitted" is in the acronym for a reason: because you have to have sex to get them. The chances of getting anything from a toilet seat, anything at all, are extremely remote. I looked up this on google and found the following: "none are spread on toilet seats... bugs don't tend to live on cool hard surfaces" and "syphilis and herpes... can be spread by direct non-sexual contact with infectious lesions, so make sure there is not an infected person already on the toilet when you sit down." Well said. More unfounded fears, and seriously, if you're that worried, hover. Oh, and don't touch the light switch or door knob, those do carry diseases.
I read an article about helicopter parents on Time.com. It describes a situation like the one I discussed above but dealing with parents and children. It's a scary situation that kids can't be kids and are ending up being less worldly than even us, who are only about 15 years their seniors. I guess people my age are already having children; I'm 27 after all. And maybe my childhood friends have become the hovering parent without even realizing it. I really just want to get a plot of land and release my kids into the wild of a boundary of a couple of acres where they can ride bikes around and go to the local corner store, and go to the beach with some SPF 30 and not many other worries. I'm sure it's possible that I will become a hovering parent... If I see my children's success as a definition of my worth. It could happen I suppose.
They mentioned the word "gifted" and I wanted to share some memories of gifted classes when I was in 5th grade. I think it was called GT, for gifted and talented. In the school I attended in forth grade it was called "TAG," for talented and gifted. I remember wondering why I didn't get to go to these classes and why these students were somehow more "talented and gifted" than I was. Looking back on this point in my life, I guess I really didn't care about school. School was very boring and I could always get past with minimal effort. When allowed to get by with minimal effort in many things, I do. It happened with athletics and with school. But since then, I have learned that I do in fact enjoy working hard, when there is something to be accomplished that is within sight, a clear-cut goal. But when I monkey can do the job, I usually amuse myself with other things and read a lot. So, I never did well in school really. I think my high school GPA was around 3.4 because I rarely did homework and was generally bored. College was the same, I got a 3.0, minimum "acceptable" grades for college. You get automatic acceptance to many graduate programs as long as you have a 3.0 or over. I took some of the advanced classes in high school and so on. But as with the classes when I was pre-middle school, the classes didn't matter much. I remember GT classes allowed kids to look through owl pellets. That's right, owl hair balls. The bones and left overs of what an owl can't digest, similar to hair balls which cats can't digest. Lasting memories. I'm sure they did advanced math and reading and so on, but all I remember is owl hair balls.
Down the road, none of these kids have done any better than I have in college or life in general, which begs the question why waste time on these "gifted" classes. Because these kids were bored with "normal" classes? So was I. My 5th grade teacher told me I'd never amount to anything.
I guess I just want to always keep it in perspective, and I want others to do the same. If I'm not keeping it in perspective, I hope people will call me out on it too.
3 comments:
We human beings are born with HALF of the emotion regulation system in place (the half that revs us up) and HALF of the system does not exist whatsoever (the half that calms us down). The brain system that will provide the ability to calm ones own self begins to develop at around eight months.
Until that time ALL calming the young child gets is from others, and often that calming is not adequate and the young child experiences terror and this terror is, amazingly, recorded in the brain forever.
Then, around ten months, the part of the brain that has the POTENTIAL to become able to calm us starts to be available. At that point, the young child can, if conditions are good, begin to memorize what caregivers do to provide calming. And here is where the problem becomes critical: the only way a human learns to effectively self-calm is be memorizing the steps received from someone who is very, very good at providing calming.
Obviously, caregivers – regardless of how much they care – vary in their ability to tune in the the child and assure the child in a way that works. As a result, on a scale of zero to ten, a few of us get a “ten” level of ability to calm ourselves, and most of us get far less. People who get a “one” or a “two” are the people who become addicts. Those of us in the middle have enough ability to calm ourselves that we can develop strategies to make up for what we were not given during those early formative months.
During teenage years, we tend to think bad things only happen to others, so we get by that. But when we realize, as we get into our twenties, that something can happen to use, we turn to strategies to keep anxiety under control. The strategies typically involve (when dealing with uncertainty)
control
escape
Control: if we control a situation, we often believe (whether really true or not) that we can make sure everything works out OK, such as when driving a car. Though it is not nearly as safe as flying, we FEEL safer because our hands are on the wheel.
Escape: this means not only a way out if things don’t go well, but a way to maintain a certain distance, either physically or psychologically.
On the ground, we do OK. But when we get aboard a plane, we have no control and no escape. Frankly, all this does is put up back to the level of ability to regulate emotions we were originally given, which is not enough by itself to regulate the emotions.
Interesting. I wonder what that means about bungee jumping and sky diving and why people enjoy losing control and being at the mercy of gravity and a parachute. Interesting though.
I was just talking about the comment you made about teenagers with my boyfriend yesterday. The problems before you seemed so serious at that age. It's interesting how it comes out in the pop literature, such as "Twilight" or "Marked." I guess teenagers generally aren't the deepest of all human age groups.
Oh, on a side note, you shouldn't ever be taking Tamiflu or any other drug without the direction of your doctor. He or she can much more carefully weigh all the pros and cons of taking anti-virals. The same thing that happens with antibiotics; people insist of them when they don't need them and the drugs end up becoming less effective overall.
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