I found a feather on the drive, a very nice feather contributed by one of the ravens that lives over in the church grounds. I picked it up, deciding our good-luck troll, who collects such things, might have a Spokane raven feather for his collection.
Then I thought: bird flu. West Nile Virus.
And put it down.
And now I think, y’know, I’m going to find that feather and hand it to the troll.
The world isn’t half as dangerous as television watchers believe. Oh, sure, I know a dozen places you can get shot, mugged, infected, or drown quite easily. But Swine Flu, pandemics, Bird Flu, radon gas and free radicals, eat this, don’t eat that, caffeine is good for this and bad for that, ditto red wine, white wine….
Y’know, when I was a kid, I dipped my fingers in hot tar, just to get some free ‘bubble gum’. Works. We collected liquid mercury out of broken thermometers and played with it. We danced in the spray of the DDT trucks trying to eliminate the mosquitos that were carrying something brought in from overseas-returning military. We ate snow-ice-cream, until it became radioactive. We went trick or treating into strangers’ houses. We ran the streets at night. We were, perhaps, the people others worried about. I went to a rough junior high and guns were common in the student population—they had search-desks in the halls and did random stops, picking up a whole arsenal of lovely things, zip guns, real guns, you name it. I walked through gang turf daily. I hiked alone, as a teen, through wildlife parks. I grew up playing on an old firing range with unexploded ordnance that turned up now and again, once lethally…so I kind of know what risk is. I rode a bike with no helmet and all our wiring was cloth-wrapped and our fuses, yes, sometimes used pennies. I was frequently exposed to whooping cough, and polio, pre-vaccine. We had only the most rudimentary refrigeration: it wouldn’t keep ice cream hard. And we ate potato salad that had been out all day and even overnight, on spring nights. It was probably colder than the fridge. We never refrigerated butter, jams, often not cheese, usually didn’t refrigerate leftover fried chicken or pork chops, just had it on the counter…it would disappear within two days. And I am still in one piece and healthy.
So now the internet and the news can inform us of the latest plague before it arrives, and we spook out, lather ourselves with alcohol gels, worry about our free radicals while wolfing down supersized Big Macs, and enough idiots are willing to order Tamiflu and Viagra lookalikes from the internet and pop this stuff in their mouths without question…they must be making money offering this stuff, since my mailbox is flooded hourly with offers…we hear about a home invasion on the telly and everybody in smalltown America checks their door locks. We hear about some trick or treat incident and every parent in America restricts their kids to their block, their neighbors. We have a mindset where a person sues a riding stable because a horse threw them, or a playground because they fell off the jungle gym. Hey, I learned not to walk under the supersized teeter-totters. One headache was enough for me. I never fell off the merry-go-round, but I was dragged a few rounds when I missed: I learned that great lesson—make up your mind where you’re going to land or don’t let go. I also learned you will not die of a skinned knee. And if you get one, hey, just pour a mercury compound on it, and you’ll be fine.
My dear friends, I think we run just a wee bit too scared. We get too much information and internalize it much too closely: it’s become the phobia of the week…so heck, yes, I’m going back to my bad old ways. Well, minus the mercury (though it’s great for one really odd thing: hangnails, and I have one bottle in stash that has lasted me for, oh, thirty years.) And I do refrigerate potato salad. And I wash the veggies.
But I maintain we are not half as fragile as the panic-of-the-day news reports would have us think.
Is it any wonder that the schools are having to do more and more of the raising? And is it any wonder why they fail?
We did things like build dams in the gutter. My imagination fails at coming up with the current response to that! (It was fun, and we learned to arch the dams against the current, just like we learned about banked curve by running marbles down the driveway on a doubled-up garden hose, and about canals while playing in the sandbox when the fruit trees were being watered.)
Oh yes, and we used rocks to explode pistol caps on the sidewalk, the kind that came in paper rolls to be used in (toy) cap guns. And magnifying lenses to burn them, too.
My younger brother did that. He also got hold of some acetylene from somewhere and threw it into the backyard loo. It exploded of course and he’s never lived that one down.
CJ, many, many thanks for the quotation from Plato! I have been apocryphily (sp!!) referencing him for a number of years re. “youth these days, careening about in their chariots” with no respect for others. To be honest, I can’t remember if I read somewhere that Plato said that, or if someone told me verbally. I keep on meaning to go look it up in Plato but never get around to skimming all of his work (although I suppose I could use the Perseus website). Do you know if, indeed, I am correct in attributing a ‘youth threatening others’s lives and limbs’ quote to him? It certainly sounds as if it would come from this passage you have quoted.
I personally imagine that the Athenian chariots were painted bright red, and of course, all chariots are convertibles.
Lol—the best I could find is that it is ‘attributed’ to Plato, which probably means nobody can find precisely where he said it, either!
Thanks for checking! I strongly suspect that it is a mental “extension” of his rant above on young children’s manners. He really was a crotchety geezer. My spouse (getting a Masters in Classics and quite, quite adept with the Greek) likes to quote, again I believe it was Plato, his complaint about “modern music” (the surviving Ancient Greek “tunes”) as being “a pointless display of speed and accuracy.” A conservative in the “classic” sense of the word, I believe we can describe old Plato.
I always considered he had his shorts in a bunch. 😉 I preferred Xenophon.
Jane has now posted pictures of the house troll. He’s very shy. We almost never get him out in the sunlight.
He certainly does look very shy. All bundled up in his raiment. Be careful, I’ve read (in Tolkein’s The Hobbit) that trolls don’t like sunlight, it turns them to stone. Maybe that accounts for the stony look the troll is giving the camera. Or maybe, if one questions the troll, one finds that it will stonewall with his replies.
I always considered Socrates to be the one who lamented on youth, but I am probably mistaken. Xenophon was interesting, much different than reading John in koine. Besides, war is always more fascinating in histories than religion. Hence the ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”
I always loved the lines, “and they marched 10 parasangs and made camp…” which was exactly the same every time, and gave you one free line of translation.
We got the troll back into the shade and he’s much happier now. You never want to tick off the house troll.
Can I just add my AMEN to everything you’ve brought up?
I love the house troll. I know I need one of these!
Glyn said “Is it any wonder that the schools are having to do more and more of the raising? And is it any wonder why they fail?”
As a public school teacher, this comment is interesting to me and if I am understanding the comment correctly (in the context of this very cool thread), I believe I agree with it!
One of my current favorites is (it’s in the paper) the teen who, while texting, walking into an open manhole. Her parents are now suing the city.
Had I done that, my parents would probably have said, a) see? and b) don’t tell anyone.
I came across this today. Something of a Warehouse 23 of cluelessness:
http://notalwaysright.com/
You right on about that.
This post really, really made me happy. I just can’t say any more than that.
“The current near-hysterical preoccupation with safety is at best a waste of resources and a crimp on the human spirit, and at worst an invitation to totalitarianism.”
-Michael Crichton
Ha! My friend the NASA engineer-scientist had it best. Her favorite saying: ” ‘Perfect safety’ is for those who don’t have the balls to face the real world.”
Jeff
I was just hearing about the 17 year old who has spent the last 13 months doing a solo sail around the world. So there is hope. (I’d like to know how his parents avoided social chastisement as he had to be 16 when he started.
If I only had a Pound for every time I’ve expressed the sentiments you’ve expressed here, CJ, I’d be a rich man. Well, richer, anyway. 100% agree.