Alice's Adventures Underground

"Mr. Rogers spent years telling little creeps that he liked them just the way they were. He should have been telling them there was a lot of room for improvement. ... Nice as he was, and as good as his intentions may have been, he did a disservice."

Putting aside the problem of even trying to measure narcissism, is this really what it's all come down to? Are we really blaming a half-hour television show for our failure to teach our children responsibility for their own actions? I'm not saying I disagree that there's a growing sense of entitlement in our culture, or even that it's a problem. But come on, can we really blame children's programming's attempt to build self esteem on this? For that matter, can we really even restrict the problem to young adults?

Perhaps... and I'm just thinking out loud here... it's our society and it's constant message in every facet of our culture and the media in general that no one ever need take responsibility for his or her actions. Instead, the method of resolution for pretty much every problem we encounter is to just blame someone else and use whatever influence we can manage to scrounge up to avoid the natural consequences of our behavior. If all else fails, sue the bastard. That couldn't have anything to do with it, could it?
 

Get two years' prison time for lying to a grand jury? Never mind. Your friend, the President, will commute your sentence.
 

“I’d like to share with you a life discovery I’ve had. I’ve always wondered to what extent attitude can be chosen, or how much of it is beyond conscious control, making it more a function of neurotransmitters, genetic predispositions, and the quality of our surrounding circumstances. It’s really a question of nature versus nurture. To those who say we are the captains of our mentality, I say look at people who are depressed. Do you think they choose to be depressed? Depression sucks. They would do a lot not be depressed; almost certainly more than the people who claim that attitude can be self-determined are actively doing to be happy. Most happy people, as far as I can tell, don’t work very hard at being happy. It just sort of works out that way by virtue of their constitution. For the most part, I include myself in that category.

Anyway, there was a recent period a couple weeks ago where I was really struggling with the fact that all my friends and my girlfriend get to go off to college in the fall with the future in their laps while I get left behind to stay at home doing chemotherapy treatment, if I’m even alive to do that. All those friends who were once my community, who kept me plugged into some sort of normal life, will be far away and very busy. I will fade and I will be bored. That was and still is hard. I know I should feel grateful just to still be alive in the fall, but somehow that didn’t help. Is it so much to ask that I too could have college to look forward to instead of either more treatment or death?

This got to me in a way that many things in me life should probably be getting to me but I’ve refused let them, and that’s been the magic of this story. I don’t think I did very many updates during this time because I didn’t feel I had anything to write that was worthy to read anymore, or of 12,000 people’s time. Whatever I had—wisdom or poise or centeredness or whatever–I felt I’d lost. Whereas previously, Miles had been on top of his cancer, now my cancer was on top of me.

This went on for about two weeks before one day I finally decided that it was enough; I needed some time to deal with that disappointment, but it’s enough now and further moping would be a waste of very precious time. I decided that today was the beginning of a change in my attitude, a change in me. I said it aloud. And what I want to tell you in this update is that it worked. I’m back, I suppose. I’m feel back on top of the cancer, and will be to the end. I’ve reverted in many ways to what I used to be—the accepting optimist–but incorporated into that is something new. Precisely what is new has not entirely crystallized yet, but I think the change can be likened to that of someone who has survived a year with one of those abhorrently difficult and unforgiving math teachers. It teaches you to suck it up and get the job done, even in the face of incredible injustice.

I conclude from this successful transformation in outlook that, to a large extent, a person can make the conscious decision to change their attitude–much more so than I previously thought. It’s not effortless; it definitely takes a certain enduring conviction. And in all fairness, by genetic predisposition, some will find simply deciding to be happy easier and some will find it harder, depending on their neurochemical makeup.

But I want to tell you that it’s possible.”

• Simply sitting down on the thing makes you feel at least 42 years more decrepit than you are.
• Able bodied people (and most non-able bodied people) can walk faster than this thing moves at top speed.
• No slow down button - there's the button you hit to go and when you take your thumb off of it, you jerk to a stop. Suddenly. With no warning.
• At the end of every aisle and when going around any corner, you need to stop and check for cross traffic. Otherwise you'll run smack into anyone who might be walking in a perpendicular direction. But you can't see further than the basket of the cart, so that sequence becomes difficult.
• No brake lights - so when you come to a sudden dead stop in order to slow down to merge into traffic described above, no one who has been walking behind you will have any notice of your intentions and will create the pedestrian version of a rear-end accident.
• Wal-Mart has so much crap parked in the middle of the aisles that you have to get out of the cart to get to the merchandise you want anyway and don't even think about doing anything but making a wide circle around each of the clothing areas, because you will not fit inside. So as long as anything you need is displayed conveniently on the edge of a large walkway, you can get to it. Anything else is a crap shoot.
• When you do get out of the cart to look at the merchandise you couldn't get to before, you feel all eyes in the store are on you, wondering who that jackass is who can walk but refuses to do so.
• Also, any merchandise in the store that is stacked higher than waist high will be out of your reach, requiring you to do the above.
• If you want to back up, even a couple of inches, you are serenaded with a loud beep, beep, beep, which further serves to ensure that all eyes in the store are on you.
  
• Your daughter will want to ride on the cart with you and then when you're stopped looking at a shirt to determine if it's the right size, she will grab the cart controls and move it forward, giving you whiplash.
• She will also randomly grab your hands and change the direction of the cart while you are trying to maneuver store traffic, nearly running down a woman and her teenage son.

Bright and early this morning, I headed off to the hospital for the shot that I had to wait two hours for but took less than two minutes to administer. It's a simple shot, people! First of all, WHY does it have to be done at a hospital anyway? I'm not sure what has become soooo untrustworthy about OBs in recent years that they are no longer allowed the onerous task of sticking a needle in my butt and sending me on my way. Secondly, what is the necessity of a two hour waiting period for said shot? It's not like they were busy at outpatient care; I saw a total of three people sitting in the lobby and two more came in after me - one was a visitor.

After waiting an hour, the nurse came out to tell me that someone had just gone to get the RhoGAM and it would probably be not more than another hour. I'd have been willing to walk the thirty yards to where the lab stored it's products myself if I'd known it was that difficult to get away. For the most part I was a patient patient because I expected this (patient patient, wha ha ha - I make me laugh), but at one point I suggested they just bring me the needle and the serum and I'd administer it myself. And they might have too, but I don't think the nurse had much confidence in me after our initial exchange when I walked through the door:

When the disease is moderate or severe the fetus can have a more marked anaemia and erythroblastosis (erythroblastosis fetalis). When the disease is very severe it can cause morbus haemolyticus neonatorum, hydrops fetalis, or stillbirth.

With the widespread use Rho(D) Immune Globulin, Rh disease of the fetus and newborn has almost disappeared.