medicine | reverse threading

“it costs $0.00 to be a decent human being,” the meme read on my niece’s page. i took a screenshot of it, not unlike the screenshots i have taken over the last year, these times unparalleled, this era of pandemic.

scrolling through these images on my desktop just now, i am gobsmacked at the limitless spectrum, a country-full of schizophrenic views, passionate opinions, factoids and untruths. i read things like, “i pray we are not going to have any kind of required coronavirus vaccine!” and “people in countries whose leaders told them the truth about covid didn’t ‘panic’. they responded. and as a result, far fewer of them died.” i read “my face, my choice!” and “masks can be worn to protect the wearer from getting infected or masks can be worn to protect others from being infected by the wearer.” i read “i’ll pee in my end of the pool if i want to” and “when you choose to act out of kindness, compassion, and love, you are already aligned with your true purpose.” a country divided into primary colors kaleidoscoping about the galaxy on planet earth, people-as-crayons all given a spot in the earth-crayola-box simply by being born, yet arguing with achromatic abandon.

on a frigid february day we got the call. all was frozen after the skies had dropped many inches of snow on our town. it was a friday. it was 4:35 and there were two vaccines left, about to expire. the overburdened-yet-infinitely-kind community health center asked if we could come immediately. we were on a waiting list for anytime there was a vaccine that might go to waste – something to be avoided at all measures. we dropped everything and jumped in the truck. they called us while we were on the way there, to make sure we were really coming, to make sure we would arrive in time.

the drive-through lane at the old bank was marked with cones. as directed, we pulled into the spot at cone #1. there was no time to be nervous – about having a shot, about the side effects of the vaccine, about any long-term ramifications. there was just this unbelievably fortunate opportunity to be decent human beings in a world raging with disease and dying. the windows of big red were frozen-shut, so, with masks on, we opened the driver and passenger doors to exuberant nurses dressed in layers upon layers of clothing, gratitude our common denominator. we were vaccines #199 and 200 that day. it cost us nothing. zero.

i couldn’t help but hope, as we got our second vaccine at cone #3 on a slightly warmer day, soon fully inoculated because of vast medical and scientific research, the proud new recipients of a wait-15-minutes-vaccine-flag, that maybe kindness and compassion and a sense of community responsibility, the brother’s/sister’s-keeper-thing, was an ingredient and that the immune systems of humans everywhere, in protecting against covid, would also be stimulated to push back against all things peeing-in-the-poolish.

read DAVID’S thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

the little red schoolhouse on cuba hill road was the place i went to kindergarten. built in 1903 it was a place of important early learnings – the stuff you learn at five and six – things this back-in-the-day first teacher, who you fall desperately in love with, would impart to you through kind, objective, steady lessons. it wasn’t that my sweet momma or poppo weren’t teaching me kindergarten-level-rules, but learning them in a place where i was surrounded by other children and could practice them immediately in-real-life i would guess had more impact. lasting lessons are often those that come through experience, through feeling and doing rather than simply hearing.

share your toys. take your turn. say please and thank you. wash your hands. do your own work. hold the door for others. keep your hands to yourself. be kind. help others. listen when others speak. be respectful of your elders. follow the rules.

i don’t specifically remember days in kindergarten but i know that i have always been a rule-follower in school and would not imperil another’s playground time by not paying attention, by disobeying, by being impervious to an adult’s directions for work that needed to be done or instructions for safe practices. i would not have ignored the be-absolutely-quiet rule during fire or duck-and-cover drills. i would not have continued talking or wreaking havoc were my teacher – or any other teacher, for that matter – to have asked for silence.

the rules seemed simple at five. we were each individually and as a group asked to follow them. those easy rules were designed to preclude chaos and our freedom to learn and have fun was never sacrificed in the process of following them. the consequences of disregarding them seemed dire – staying in during playtime. one child’s misbehavior often led to the whole class missing playground. to be THAT child was not a sought-after title. instead, we would work together – in our five-year-old beehive fashion – to clean up the classroom and desks and chairs so that we were all ready – together – to go play.

it’s the way i feel about masks. it hasn’t been recommended to us by medical and science professionals to wear masks as a lark. this recommendation comes with passionate imploring. it is a simple rule. if this, then that. conditional. if we wear masks, we will dramatically lower the transmission of this global pandemic raging through our country. it is a proven fact and other countries have shown their adherence to mask-wearing has flattened the curve of the disease. pretty simple, yes. a mask.

instead, there are those people who flagrantly ignore this simple if-this-then-that. we see them everywhere. it’s breathtaking. and their display of arrogant individualism at a time of an intense need to care-for-community means one thing: we will not get to go out to play.

read DAVID’s thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

reverse threading

the path back is the path forward

Tag Archives: medicine

#199 and 200. [merely-a-thought monday]

things i learned at the little red schoolhouse. [merely-a-thought monday]

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