I cannot figure out if my fears are a symptom of aging or a result of watching too much television. I worry about trees falling on top of the house and traffic signals crashing down in the middle of an intersection as I walk through. I worry about falling as I climb out of the shower and I worry about falling out of my bed, which is two feet – at most – off the ground. What if I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and, being only half awake, get disoriented and trip over something on my way back to bed and break my neck or my ankle? What then? What if I come down with the swine flu and die a prolonged and agonizing death because my brain gets so fried on the virus that I’m unable to make a phone call? What if I have sleep apnea? What if I suffer an aneurism – one of my grandfathers died from one – and my head explodes while I’m putting away the dishes? Last week I got really dizzy every time I turned over in bed. I was just about to call the doctor when I woke up with a start and realized I’d been having a dream about being dizzy. But why did I wake up so suddenly? Was there a noise? Was someone prowling around outside my window? Or did I wake up because I couldn’t breathe? It’s endless around here.
I come up with plenty to worry about on my own, and the television does not help. The food may be contaminated, tap water may be hazardous to our health, the Internet is a gigantic disaster waiting to happen. It’s gotten unusually cold in Portland this week, and the news people are all over it, issuing dire warnings about when you should rush to the emergency room in case you or your children are frostbitten, what you need to do to make sure your wood stove or fireplace doesn’t burn the house down and kill your family in the process and, while we’re on the subject of calamities, we should all be very, very nervous about the pipes bursting.
I am.
A lot of the fear I see and hear is focused on children. The toy hamsters are toxic. The side of the crib is going to kill the baby, as will the baby hammock. And the car seats, man, the car seats. I’d love to know who does the lobbying for the car seat manufacturers, because they have done an excellent job. According to one of my more authoritative relations, it’s illegal to not use a car seat if your child is under a certain weight or age. Every car commercial I see talks about new and improved safety features, and yet it’s now a law to buy something that wasn’t even heard of that long ago. I have three brothers and two sisters, and when we were growing up, not only did we not use car seats, we didn’t even use seatbelts, nor did our parents, who usually sat up front when we went out. Sometimes we even hung out the window, and if our father was in a really good mood he’d let us ride in the trunk, our legs dangling out over the rear bumper like we were country music stars. Believe it or not, sometimes my parents drank beer in the car, while they were driving, with children.
And yet here we all are, in our 30s, 40s and 50s, still managing for the most part. We’ve survived, but some of us have adapted to modern times more readily than others. Not long ago, relatively speaking, one of my nephews was learning how to ride a bike. He put on his helmet and his mother snapped it for him. Being the son of two unusually hype-prone parents, he looked up at me and said, with a very genuine smile on his face, “Safety first.” My dead mother turned over in her urn, and as far away as Oregon, the windows trembled. Safety first. Isn’t that sad? Like most everything, my nephew’s statement gave me something to worry about. When people get physically injured, they often recover, but what’s the prognosis for toddlers who, thanks to their parents’ aversion to critical thinking, repeat mindless slogans that wring childhood dry of any sense of adventure or spontaneity? More so than broken plumbing and broken bones, that’s something that really scares me.
I come up with plenty to worry about on my own, and the television does not help. The food may be contaminated, tap water may be hazardous to our health, the Internet is a gigantic disaster waiting to happen. It’s gotten unusually cold in Portland this week, and the news people are all over it, issuing dire warnings about when you should rush to the emergency room in case you or your children are frostbitten, what you need to do to make sure your wood stove or fireplace doesn’t burn the house down and kill your family in the process and, while we’re on the subject of calamities, we should all be very, very nervous about the pipes bursting.
I am.
A lot of the fear I see and hear is focused on children. The toy hamsters are toxic. The side of the crib is going to kill the baby, as will the baby hammock. And the car seats, man, the car seats. I’d love to know who does the lobbying for the car seat manufacturers, because they have done an excellent job. According to one of my more authoritative relations, it’s illegal to not use a car seat if your child is under a certain weight or age. Every car commercial I see talks about new and improved safety features, and yet it’s now a law to buy something that wasn’t even heard of that long ago. I have three brothers and two sisters, and when we were growing up, not only did we not use car seats, we didn’t even use seatbelts, nor did our parents, who usually sat up front when we went out. Sometimes we even hung out the window, and if our father was in a really good mood he’d let us ride in the trunk, our legs dangling out over the rear bumper like we were country music stars. Believe it or not, sometimes my parents drank beer in the car, while they were driving, with children.
And yet here we all are, in our 30s, 40s and 50s, still managing for the most part. We’ve survived, but some of us have adapted to modern times more readily than others. Not long ago, relatively speaking, one of my nephews was learning how to ride a bike. He put on his helmet and his mother snapped it for him. Being the son of two unusually hype-prone parents, he looked up at me and said, with a very genuine smile on his face, “Safety first.” My dead mother turned over in her urn, and as far away as Oregon, the windows trembled. Safety first. Isn’t that sad? Like most everything, my nephew’s statement gave me something to worry about. When people get physically injured, they often recover, but what’s the prognosis for toddlers who, thanks to their parents’ aversion to critical thinking, repeat mindless slogans that wring childhood dry of any sense of adventure or spontaneity? More so than broken plumbing and broken bones, that’s something that really scares me.
