More germs, fewer emails... a rant of epic proportions

A friend sent me an email today, warning me of the dangers of my purse. My purse, it seems, is a portable laboratory of microbial nastiness, and should never be placed on my counter, my desk, or any other contaminatable surface, including myself. Just the latest in the germ phobia of the average American that is making our children the sickest they have ever been. Yes, I mean that. They have puny little immune systems and so get sick every five minutes. I blame Clorox, Lysol and all the other merchants of terror that want us to live antiseptic lives.

When I was a child, shortly after the creation of the firmament, childhood was a dangerous time. Children suffered from and were maimed and killed by “childhood” diseases no one gets any more, praise God and science. Diphtheria, typhus, scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, measles, mumps, polio… all conquered, all but gone forever. There were scarier diseases back then, but fewer allergies, less asthma, and considerably fewer trips to the doctor. Since the advent of these wonderful vaccines, you’d think people would be more sanguine about the colds and flu we intermittently suffer. But no- Americans seem to think they should be immune from illness.

Americans do not seem to understand how their immune systems work. For an immune system to become competent to combat pathogens, it must be exposed to pathogens. That’s the underlying fundamental biological surety behind the development of vaccines. What do vaccines do? They introduce the immune system to pathogens that have been rendered mostly harmless so that the system will learn to recognize them. When the real thing comes around, the immune system is armed and ready to launch an attack against the pathogen it has been trained to attack. No exposure to germs, no protection.

So what have the last two generations of guilt-ridden, over-burdened, two-incomes-no-time parents done? They have created a population of “boys in the bubble” by pathologically protecting their children from pathogens. They have become psychotically over-protective to the detriment of their children at the same time that they have become convinced that they are well informed. Well informed by TV. What are the odds?

I wish Americans would turn off the damn TV. TV has convinced parents that pedophiles are on every street corner, taught them to fear gangs and drugs beyond any reasonable level of necessary fear, and trained them through advertisements that no home is safe for children until it is surgically sterile and hermetically sealed. Kids don’t go out to play anymore because pedophiles, gangs, drugs and germs lie in wait for them there.

News flash, constant readers. The world is NOT more dangerous that it was when I was a child and my mother threw me out of the house and told me to be back when the street lights came on. We just THINK it is because of TV. We are afraid of pedophiles in Texas and gangs in Los Angeles in tiny little Tullahoma Tennessee and it’s STUPID. Our children are fearful and sedentary because TV brings us a cornucopia of bad news every day that exaggerates the nature of danger because danger and fear SELLS STUFF.

And the stuff it sells the most are anti-bacterial cleaners. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against being clean. I am against being neurotic about it. Kids should be allowed to get dirty without having to be laundered with Lysol and fed antibiotics “just in case”. ANTIBIOTICS ARE NOT PROPHYLACTICS, PEOPLE. They can’t prevent an infection, they can only attack one. Next time a doctor prescribes antibiotics as a preventative, FIRE HIM! He is a moron, and you are being moronic if you take meds you don’t need, or feed them to your kids because you are fearful. Antibiotic resistant bacteria. Ever heard of them? Guess where they come from? FROM THE INAPPROPRIATE USE OF ANTIBIOTICS.

Tell me why you are wiping down your lamps with Clorox. Why are you so afraid of Salmonella, when just a little common sense is all you need to be safe? Detergent and water will clean up after chicken prep just fine. Wash your counters, don’t disinfect them unless you plan on doing surgery on them. You are going to cook the damn food anyway. High heat kills bacteria. Hello!

My grandmother and mother and women of their generations believed that a “child will eat a peck of dirt before its fifth birthday.” (A peck, by the way, is ¼ bushel, or eight quarts. How many quarts in a bushel, then, class?) Children didn’t take multiple baths in a day. They were washed regularly, don’t get me wrong, but they didn’t take morning and evening showers, or change their clothes three or four times a day, or only wear an outfit once before it was laundered. They were inundated with bacteria, microbes, viruses, and fungi, and still were healthier than most kids today. They had fewer colds, less flu, fewer infections, and astonishingly fewer allergies. Had the vaccines of today been available back then, they would have been superkids.

Most of the bacteria encountered in day-to-day life are harmless. Some of them are actually beneficial. I say, America, get over your germ phobia. Turn off the damn TV. Send your kids outside and let them get really dirty and sweaty; it’s good for them. And stop sending me emails about how there are germs on everything. I know that already, and frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

This-ing and That-ing Again

I babysat my wonderful baby granddaughter Emily (three in November) for the very first time in her entire life today. Becca left her with me while she ran to the grocery store. Emily looked adorable, and we had such a wonderful time she did not want to go home. Isn’t it funny how something as simple as the pleasure of a child’s company can iron all the wrinkles out of your life? My eldest granddaughters Kendall and Haley have apparently reached the “we don’t need you, thanks” age; Delaney still loves me, but she stopped dancing with joy at the sight of me some time ago. Sometimes you just need someone joyful at seeing you to know your life has meaning. We played with the castle and put all the people in the dungeon- Emily is very strict- we had Popsicles, and washed our hands and faces and admired ourselves in the mirror; she even let me brush her hair! We hauled out the paints and were in mid-masterpiece when Becca came back insisting on taking Emily home. Just because she had to pick up the three big girls from school, put away the groceries, and start dinner, was that any reason to spoil our fun?

Segue...
Every week, Dave and I watch “Two and a Half Men” and laugh our asses off. Fortunately, they are large asses and easy to find, and we have a good time screwing them back on again. Sometimes we exchange them, - which is always good for a laugh, and our asses fall off again. You find your amusements where you can at our age.
Anyway, at the end of each show, there is a 1.5 second flash of a vanity card, written by Chuck Lorre, writer, producer, and dazzling wit. (Mr. Lorre was same for Cybill, Dharma and Greg, Grace Under Fire and Roseanne.) What is a vanity card? It’s like a mini-blog flashed onto the screen in which the writer indulges his own vanity.

Or, as IMDB dryly puts it, “The Chuck Lorre Productions vanity card at the end of each episode consists of the words "Chuck Lorre Productions", the episode number, and a short essay or mini screenplay that changes with each episode. Topics have included a riff on slang words that Lorre wants to coin(1), the reason a certain scene containing the line of dialogue that was used as the episode's title was edited out(2), and a screenplay about Lorre's assistant entering his office and finding him curled up in the foetal position(3).”

Foetal rather than fetal.
How effete.
Makes you want to dash right out and read it, doesn’t it?
No matter -you cannot read a vanity card in 1.5 seconds anyway but thanks to TiVo, you can pause it to read it. Or, if you are like Dave and I at the end of the show- you know, looking for your ass- you can find the hilarious cards here:

http://www.chucklorre.com/text/


I warn you, his writing is subversive, politically incorrect, slightly skewed toward dementia and brilliant. It’s also somehow endearing. I would love to meet this guy. You cannot help but love a guy who makes you laugh with delighted abandon until you wet your pants. Thank God for Depends. The vanity card that nearly killed me was Year Three, Episode #146 entitled “The writers of ‘Two and a Half Men’ foolishly present the 25 'old' jokes we didn't use”( in an episode about Alan “dating” his 80-year-old next door neighbor, played by Cloris Leachman). Well, at least I would have died laughing.

1TAAHM- Year Two- Episode #130
The words Chuck invents are doorgasm, gridlove, and homortified. Look ‘em up.
2TAAHM – Year Two- Episode #124
The title of the show was “Frankenstein and the Horny Villagers”.
3TAAHM- Year Two- Episode #136
Title: “Persistent Vegetative State: Pilot Script”

I took the job.

Yes, I am a moron.

To teach, or not to teach... what a dilemma!

My answering machine is always complaining that I never listen to it, which is patently untrue. I listened to it last Friday. I ‘d left the house for the first time since my hand surgery, which went well, thank you, though the pain pills are better for causing indigestion than they are for curbing pain. And, of course, the minute I left the house, someone interesting called.

That someone was the division secretary of the college for which I used to teach. She’s a sharp cookie; she practically runs the math and science division single-handedly, and is the picture you see when you look up the word “competence” in the dictionary. She’s also a lot of fun. But I digress. She was calling to ask if I would be interested in teaching a genetics class this fall as an adjunct. She was calling on Friday. She needs an answer by Monday.

Remember, constant readers, three things:
I left the college so I could travel with my hubby, who is gone most of the time.
I recently had hand surgery and am still recovering from it.
I have been out of the teaching field for almost three years.
I hate making choices, especially ones that must be made quickly.
Okay, so that’s four things. I was in the science half of the math and science division.

There are advantages, believe it or not, to being an adjunct rather than a full-time faculty member, but none of them are monetary. The first advantage is that you don’t HAVE to teach anything you don’t want to. Don’t want to teach nights? Okay. Only want to teach one class? Okay. Only want to work two days a week? Okay. You don’t have to work registrations, do student advisement, serve on committees, or try to work professional development into an already over-crowded schedule. And if you don’t want to travel to satellite campuses, they can’t make you.

I spent 10 years commuting almost an hour each way to a site where I was, for all intents and purposes, the science department. Other faculty cycled in and out, but I was assigned there and was the lab supervisor there. I loved the campus, loved my co-workers, loved my students, loved teaching. I also hated my cubicle- in my entire career, I was in a bull-pen all but one semester- hated the long hours, hated fighting for every reasonable, necessary and logical thing with a bureaucracy that was a disinterested 47 miles away, and hated being treated with disrespect by the people who should have valued me. Towards the end, even the commute was becoming hateful. Those two hours out of every day were beginning to take their toll. Over time, I became very unhappy with my job.

But never with teaching. I have really missed teaching. So teaching this class will be a good thing, right?

Then again… it will take a lot of work to get prepared on short notice, and I have gotten kinda lazy being semi-retired. All my teaching materials are scattered, stored or outdated, so I will essentially be starting from scratch. Teaching the class will cut seriously into my scrapbooking time, but my clipped wing is going to do that anyway. It will call a temporary halt to my trips to San Diego, and I really enjoy my trips to San Diego, even though Mama tries valiantly to give me an ulcer with her antics while I am gone. If I take the job, Mama will be happy because I won’t be traveling, but I’m not sure how well I could weather 15 solid weeks of Mama without a break. I don’t have a professional wardrobe anymore… then again, that’s easily solved and I do love to shop. I don’t know. I’m torn.

I have been weighing the pros and cons and asking everyone’s advice. My daughter has disdained to offer any. David thinks I should do it. My friend Marcia thinks I should do it. My Dad is vehemently opposed to my doing it.

Damn. I have to have an answer for them tomorrow. I wonder what I am going to say. I will be on pins and needles until I find out.

Stay tuned.