Thanks for the Worries
was written for the Concord Monitor
a few years ago, and then included in my book Granite Grumblings (Snap
Screen Press, 2011). It is still totally applicable today. I hope you have
some fun with it.
I also ask that if you are enjoying this blog, please tell
your friends. I have a very loyal following and I greatly appreciate you all,
but it would be great to add to the group and with over 110 posts now, I think
there might be something on here for almost everyone. It is amazing how a blog
from New Hampshire can develop followers from Malaysia and China to Equador and
France but that is one of the virtues of the internet. Thanks to all of you.
Glenn K. Currie
Thanks for the Worries
Recently my radio blared out at me with an advertisement for
the treatment of a newly defined disease. It was described as “generalized
anxiety syndrome”.
Upon further analysis it became clear that we were really
talking about a fancy name for people who worry too much. I don’t classify this
as a new illness since I’ve been suffering from it for years. Of course I didn’t
know I had a disease. I thought I just worried too much. Now I can worry about
a disease.
Even better, the advertiser says he has a new experimental
drug to treat the disease. So I can also worry about whether I should take the
drug. I can also worry about why, if this drug is so good, they are desperately
advertising for volunteers. After all, almost everyone I know worries too much.
And who can blame them.
Our national capability to worry is almost unlimited. And it
is strongly reinforced by media that is not happy unless they are pushing the
public panic button.
The material to do this is plentiful and I have put together
just a small sampling of the basic equal-opportunity worries that assault our
senses. I have purposely left off this list the really well-known concerns such
as smoking, AIDS, Ebola, high blood pressure, cancer, etc., which are actual
real worries. Instead, I am going to focus on the vaguer, hit and run issues
that the media seem to assault us with on an almost daily basis.
First on the list is food. I don’t have a clue what I should
be eating. It used to be that if it tasted good and was fattening, it was bad
for you. If it had the flavor of cardboard, you could eat as much as you
wanted.
There was lots of guidance from trusted authority figures.
Do you remember when your mother told you to drink your milk? You just knew it
was good for you. She never said “drink your Coke”. Life was simple.
Then came the media blitz, however, in which the nation’s
favorite baby doctor and some cronies declared that milk was a national
disaster. Every TV news show and newspaper in the country picked up the story
and ran with it.
Of course, some might have been a little skeptical since Dr.
Spock was also the guy responsible for the upbringing of all the bubble-headed
idiots who became known as the Sixties Generation (of which I must confess to
be one).
Dr. Spock, and a triumvirate of milk “experts”, hit us with
a massive scare that left the milk industry in tatters, and then nothing.
Nobody gave us alternatives, (except breast milk, which is a little tough to
come by for a fifty-year-old). And nobody had the courage to step up and tell
us that these guys were a couple of pints short of a quart. Instead the subject
just suddenly disappeared from the news. It was a hit and run attack on milk
that left us worrying without resolution.
Milk is not alone among foods to worry about, however.
Sometime over the last couple of decades, the following foods have been
declared dangerous to consume: tomatoes, cranberries, grapes, apples, sugar,
salt, chicken, beef, all dairy products, swordfish, all processed foods,
anything wrapped in plastic, margarine, peanut butter, chocolate, white flour,
happy meals and coffee, to name just a few.
That covers almost everything I like, and I know I’ve missed
a lot. There’s also some stuff I’m not sure about. Oat bran used to be good,
then it was bad or neutral. I don’t know. I don’t care.
But let’s not focus on food worries. There’s a whole
smorgasboard of stuff to get us into a panic.
1) Air and water (loaded with pollutants)
2) Sunshine (UV exposure)
3) Televisions, microwaves, electric blankets (radiation)
4) Cell phones (brain cancer)
5) Male pattern baldness (heart attacks)
6) Breast implants (silicone)
7) Charlie Sheen raising children
The list is endless.
So what’s the solution? I’m not sure, but I suspect it
doesn’t start with taking some experimental drug, unless you want to know what
you’ll be worrying about next.
Basically, it seems
we all need to lighten up a little. Maybe the media need to stop the hit and
run attacks. Perhaps they should even consider the source, before they start
publishing allegations. After all, in this country you can get some loony tune
to make any kind of absurd statement, and if it is repeated enough in the right
places, it will achieve some level of credibility.
There are also some things we might be better off not
knowing. What am I going to do about it, even if it is true that losing my hair
makes me a higher risk candidate for a heart attack. The ensuing anxiety
probably jumps my odds another 100 percent.
The public also needs to use a little common sense. (I know
this is a toughie). I mean guys were calling their doctors after the news came
out to see if they could eliminate the heart attack threat by having a hair
transplant. Maybe a head transplant would work.
As for the food issues, maybe we should go back to eating
what we like. We’re going to worry about it anyway, so at least let’s have a
good time If it turns out we did eat the wrong thing, we can always clean the
system out real good by turning on C-Span and watching Washington politics at
work. Now that is something to worry about.
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