Tuesday, August 29, 2006
8 Minute Abs...
will make sneezing painful. The movie should come with a warning lable.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Good to keep things in perspective
Things haven’t been going so well lately, which has kinda sapped my motivation to keep you all up to date on what’s been going on. But this last week something really snapped me back into reality.
After a particularly rough day, I went home and just wanted to relax on my futon pad with a good book. I’ve been reading Meg Greenfield’s “Washington” and if you want to know how things work out here at an interpersonal level, it’s just the book to do it. Anyway, I misplaced it and was more than a little miffed that this was another example of things just not going right.
I decided to grab another book from the living room’s library and just settle in for the night. I suppose I should have told you all about this library. The living room has two book cases built into the wall, running the length of the wall and packed from floor to ceiling with books on everything from the psychology of sex to Newt Gingrich’s book. I’m not brave enough to read “The Exorcist” but there are two copies for good measure. I ran across a very slim children’s book, not more than twenty 6” x 6” pages, tucked away next to one of the cabinet’s sides, titled “Johnny and the Eggs Virus”.
It’s an old book, with all the pictures in black, white or blue, simply written in the voice of a six year old boy speaking to the reader. Johnny recalls conversations he had with his mother, other kids, doctors, nurses and a social worker. Johnny has overheard all these folks talking about how Johnny has the Eggs virus, which intrigues him. Curious, Johnny asks just what the Eggs virus is, and is corrected. Johnny doesn’t have Eggs, he has AIDS.
The rest of the story recounts Johnny’s conversations with adults explaining what the rest of his life will be like. He will have to take lots of medicines and sometimes he might have to go to the hospital for a long time. People will be afraid of him, but not those at the clinic, they will be his family who will talk to him about his disease. The story ends with Johnny observing, in a very Tiny Tim like atmosphere, that life would be better if everyone were able to talk about what separates them.
I couldn’t do much after finishing the book but sit on a wooden stool wondering what poor parent had to buy and read aloud that book to their young child who had just been diagnosed with HIV, and try to make them understand just what it was they had and just what it meant. There’s not much that could go wrong in my life that could compare.
After a particularly rough day, I went home and just wanted to relax on my futon pad with a good book. I’ve been reading Meg Greenfield’s “Washington” and if you want to know how things work out here at an interpersonal level, it’s just the book to do it. Anyway, I misplaced it and was more than a little miffed that this was another example of things just not going right.
I decided to grab another book from the living room’s library and just settle in for the night. I suppose I should have told you all about this library. The living room has two book cases built into the wall, running the length of the wall and packed from floor to ceiling with books on everything from the psychology of sex to Newt Gingrich’s book. I’m not brave enough to read “The Exorcist” but there are two copies for good measure. I ran across a very slim children’s book, not more than twenty 6” x 6” pages, tucked away next to one of the cabinet’s sides, titled “Johnny and the Eggs Virus”.
It’s an old book, with all the pictures in black, white or blue, simply written in the voice of a six year old boy speaking to the reader. Johnny recalls conversations he had with his mother, other kids, doctors, nurses and a social worker. Johnny has overheard all these folks talking about how Johnny has the Eggs virus, which intrigues him. Curious, Johnny asks just what the Eggs virus is, and is corrected. Johnny doesn’t have Eggs, he has AIDS.
The rest of the story recounts Johnny’s conversations with adults explaining what the rest of his life will be like. He will have to take lots of medicines and sometimes he might have to go to the hospital for a long time. People will be afraid of him, but not those at the clinic, they will be his family who will talk to him about his disease. The story ends with Johnny observing, in a very Tiny Tim like atmosphere, that life would be better if everyone were able to talk about what separates them.
I couldn’t do much after finishing the book but sit on a wooden stool wondering what poor parent had to buy and read aloud that book to their young child who had just been diagnosed with HIV, and try to make them understand just what it was they had and just what it meant. There’s not much that could go wrong in my life that could compare.
