Put On Your Big Boy Pants

A Protein Bar Causes Anxieties in the Doctor's Waiting Room

In my messenger bag is a protein bar, as it’s called, a disgusting, noxious mix of processed ingredients, sugar, corn syrup, various proteins isolated through the use of solvents, most likely cancer-causing. It’s doubtful I’ll ever eat it, but it comforts me to know it’s there in case that while I’m waiting to see my doctor that if I get stuck in the waiting room for a longer period that I can handle (anything more than 10 minutes), I can comfort my hunger pains with something to avoid passing out, which is how I feel when I’m waiting beyond what I planned for an appointment. 

The most common scenario for the doctor, or therapist, being late is that the patient before me takes too much time. But there are other scenarios. There might be an electric blackout, or a lockdown due to a prison escapee on the loose; or a hostage situation, or an earthquake, with me trapped beneath chunks of concrete for several days before being rescued, surviving the ordeal only because I brought my messenger bag with my water-filled CamelBak and the aforementioned protein bar. 

When I think of the possibility of surviving an earthquake while waiting for my doctor in the waiting room, I am presented with many moral challenges. What if a dozen patients, including myself, are trapped beneath the rubble? Am I supposed to share my protein bar with them? One bar for twelve people? Isn’t that too meager to do anyone any good? What about three people? Would I be big enough to share with two others? 

What if it was just me and a woman? Would her degree of attractiveness determine my generosity so that if I found her pretty I would share my protein bar with her, but if I found her not attractive in the slightest, I might eat the bar behind her back? 

What kind of person am I? I don’t know because all these scenarios are mere speculation. But I fear that if tested with these moral challenges, I would fall short, and this thought fills me with self-loathing. 

These pessimistic thoughts are giving me anxieties as I wait for my late doctor. I reach into my messenger bag, pick up the protein bar, and notice my hands are shaking, a condition made worse as I read the long list of chemical ingredients and feel the walls begin to shake . . . 

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Is Paul McCartney Naive When It Comes to Human Nature?

Vegan rock super star Paul McCartney said “If there were glass walls on the slaughterhouses,  everyone would be a vegetarian.”

Perhaps some would convert, but many would not. Case in point, my officemate teaches health at the college and he shows a film every semester of a doctor examining two lungs, one healthy and one destroyed by a lifetime of cigarette smoking. The diseased lung is bloated, yellow, and looks plain gross. The students making gagging sounds. 

But during the break some of those same students are in the courtyard smoking. 

Humans compartmentalize; in other words, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand does. 

We can enjoy a barbecued steak and forget what we saw behind the glass walls. 

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My First Lesson on the Humiliation of Being Pitied

I was six years old and trying to tell myself that everything was okay as I walked with three boys to KR Smith Elementary in San Jose, CA. Normally, a Hostess apple pie or cupcake created anticipation for lunch, but not today because the smell of rotten tuna wafting from my Captain Kangaroo lunch box was so strong my companions kept nagging me to explain what the hell the horrible smell was. Finally, I relented and stopped in a field and to appease their curiosity.  I opened the lunch box and the rotten tuna sandwich, slimy and mixed with the mayonnaise, and had escaped its plastic baggie and had splattered throughout the insides of the tin pail. The boys and I gaped at the impossibly malodorous, black tuna juice, which was a combination of black ink streaks and odious chunks. The rancid tuna had coated my apple, my orange, my Hostess pie, and whatever else Mother had put inside for me that day.

One of the boys asked me if I was going to eat this and I shrugged. I assumed I had no choice. It was my lunch after all. So I closed the lunch box and we continued our way to school where I put my lunch box alongside everyone else’s in the designated coat closet.

During class, Mrs. Corey sniffed along with the other students as everyone tried to detect the source of a hellish stench. Crinkling her forehead, she demanded to know if someone soiled their pants or if someone brought a dead creature into her classroom. All of the students were squeezing their noses and making mock gagging noises. It was clear Mrs. Corey could not teach until the matter of the rancid fish smell had been solved.

The boys I had walked to school with pointed at my offending lunch box upon which Mrs. Corey walked cautiously toward it, as if approaching a landmine. She slowly opened the box and stared at the box’s contents as if witnessing an abomination from the bowels of hell. Then looking at me, she said, “Did your mom pack this?”

I nodded and Mrs. Corey winced in a way that seemed to castigate my parents, my extended family, and my ancient ancestors. With a sour expression, she then closed the lunch box, gave it to the teacher aid to place outside, and announced to the class that my food was unfit for eating and that she needed volunteers to take one thing out of their lunch and give it to me so that I would have something to eat during lunch time.

During the lunch break, I was too mortified and ashamed to have an appetite and I remained on my blanket while avoiding the odd stares from my classmates. It was my first lesson on how generosity, no matter how well-intentioned, becomes a burden when tinged with pity because the recipient of the charity feels belittled, humiliated and smaller as a human being than the giver. Charity is too often a bargain in which the recipient loses his dignity and feels bankrupted in so many intangible ways that accepting the charity becomes impossible. 

 

Is It Weird That I've Always Associated Days of the Week with a Specific Color?

This morning my wife Carrie, preparing to go to work, asked me what I thought of her orange top. I said, "It's Thursday. I don't wear orange on Thursday."

She gave me a weird look upon which I explained:

Since I've been in the third grade, I've associated colors with days of the week. Monday is brown or gray. Tuesday is blue. Wednesday is yellow. Thursday is purple or black. Friday is yellow or orange. Saturday is red. Sunday, my least favorite day, is black mottled with yellow. I tend to wear warm colors on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I tend to wear cool colors on Tuesday and Thursday. I'm more flexible on weekends. 

Am I the only person who has this "condition"? It sure made my wife raise her eye brows. 

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