Showing posts with label quackery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quackery. Show all posts

Friday, February 10, 2023

Ma, I Don't Feel Good

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like." -Jackie Mason


Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

I have a confession to make. As a kid and a callowyute, I regularly missed school by claiming to be sick when I wasn't.

{Gasp!}

My mum and I had an unspoken, unacknowledged agreement that as long as I didn't get carried away, as long as I was passing, this was acceptable. 

{Wait-wait-wait. If this arrangement was unspoken and unacknowledged how do you know what she...}

For the same reason I knew that if I did get carried away or I was failing that she wouldn't have hesitated to intervene, Dana.

{Huh. Ask a silly question. I'm going to go out on a limb here. You didn't much care for formal education, yes?}

It interfered with my reading, but that's not what I want to talk about.

{I'm shocked. May we, your humble gentlereaders, have a hint, pray tell?} 

Certainly, it's about how I felt about illness/injury/disease/etceterease as a kid and a callowyute as opposed to my take now that I'm a sexy senior citizen.


Even when my delayed adulthood finally arrived — when I was 32 and went from hippie with a job to a man with a chronically sick wife and a nine-year-old daughter (a tomboyperson still prone to self-injury decades later) virtually overnight — I took my good health for granted and assumed it would last forever. 

{Forever?}

In the sense that I didn't give it much thought. Having been blessed with what I now realize was excellent health I somehow assumed this was the way of things. Other people might be subject to health problems, but not me.

{That makes no sense. I suppose you thought you were going to live forever as well?}

Paradoxically, no. I've long assumed, to one degree or another, that we're all merely characters in a very vivid dream that God is having regardless of what's next. Since there's nothing to be done, what's all the fuss about?

For the record, I can't take any credit for this attitude any more than I can take credit for many decades of effortless good health (now gone), or any more than I can take credit for having no desire to live forever (which I suspect would be quite boring).

That's just how I roll, as they say, assuming they still say that. 

{You should ask them.}
 

Nowadays, I give a lot of attention to the state of my health for multiple reasons: 

- I'm in no hurry to be deleted. Watching Western Civilization attempting to commit suicide is fascinating. 

- I'm almost 70 and I've always thought that 70 and up means you're old. I'm now coping with various and sundry health problems, none life-threatening (that I know of), that started about five years ago and seem to be proliferating. 

- I know a lot of dead people who live on in my psyche.

- I've personally been directly involved with more than one H. sapien dying slowly, painfully, and not "well" (as they also say), and I know there are worse things than dying.     


Fortunately, unlike my mum and dad, who died 5 and 13 years prior to my current age, respectively, I've never been addicted to nicotine and I have effortless access to a world wide web of all knowledge.

Unfortunately, real, licensed, practicing highly trained docs frequently disagree with each other about any given malady. 

Note the word real and consider yourself warned because there's also no shortage of (technically) real doctors and licensed practitioners of this, that, and that other thing on the web, many of whom have thousands of "followers," and who claim to have the answer (or the product) you're looking for. 

There's also no shortage of quacks, blackguards, and ne'er-do-wells making a comfortable living legally selling snake oil in the Information Age by posting notices and warnings in the fine print. Preying on the sick and vulnerable might not be the world's oldest profession but it's on the top ten list. 

For some reason, George Noory, host of an extremely popular late-night radio show, comes to mind 

Wikipedia: "Coast to Coast AM is an American late-night radio talk show that deals with a variety of topics. Most frequently the topics relate to either the paranormal or conspiracy theories."

Helpfully, there's a website where you can easily access: 

"...EXCLUSIVE HAND-PICKED PRODUCTS FROM GEORGE NOORY'S SHOW! ONE-OF-A-KIND PRODUCTS, FOR LIVING AND LOOKING A HEALTHIER LIFE, ALL WITH A FREE GIFT AND FREE SHIPPING."

As Mr. Spock would say, may you live long and prosper. 

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day


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