How Safe Are We?
Sun., January 11, 02:00 PM
Code Orange, Code Yellow, Orange again… They always have something else to scare us with. Denver Doug wrote today about how the newspapers (and the other media) dwell on all the scary stuff that could happen: SARS, mad cow disease, cell phone cancer, ad infinitum. Every time the code changes, the reporters are asking the “man on the street” whether he changed any plans because of safety concerns.
C’mon! They’re just words. Are we any safer than we were before 9-11? I don’t think so. We just didn’t know about it before. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take precautions, but we certainly can’t dwell on it.
If you’re categorizing, I fall into the timid rather than the adventurous type of person. It took a real effort, some years ago, to tell myself that I wasn’t going to forgo life forever just because I was scared. We flew to Florida last spring; screening was annoying, but it wasn’t impossible. We took the train to Boston last fall; Husband was far more difficult in general than any security measures were. I have often said that, if you’re destined to die from an airplane crash, staying off the plane won’t help. You can cower in your home, and it will fall on you.
I’ve plenty of other constraints – like not being as strong or agile as I used to be, or like not being able to drive at night. But none of those is about to keep me from living my life.
I’ve always been careful about what I eat and particularly what I served my children. I finally realized that there was no middle ground; everything you eat puts you in some sort of danger. (Eat your meat rare and it could be infected. Brown it thoroughly and it develops carcinogens. Don’t eat meat at all and you miss out on important nutrients…) At some point I said, never mind; I will go on serving balanced meals and we will be fine. We were, and the children grew up with sophisticated tastes as well.
For years it was standard procedure to give small doses of aspirin to children with elevated temperatures. My children were past the danger age before we ever heard about Reye’s Syndrome and aspirin. I did shield them from overzealous physicians who administer penicillin at every strange symptom. Aspirin, the wonder drug of the post-World War I era, is still the most effective treatment for many ailments. Unfortunately, I have become sensitive to it over the years – and I bleed easily – so I have to use Tylenol®. Every other over-the-counter analgesic makes me sneeze. Will the Tylenol ruin my liver? Probably, if nothing else gets to it first. Am I scared? I’ve got better things to worry about, thank you very much.
A Music of Your Life item: I heard that the surviving Righteous Brother is performing alone now. Sometimes he just sings without any harmony, but other times he invites the audience to provide the missing part. The fact that there are members of the audience who can sing these songs are just another reminder that this music was really the soundtrack of our growing up.
