Skip to main content

La La La La... and It's Pitfalls

 


La, La, La, La, La, La… Remember when you didn’t want to hear what someone had to say as a kid? You’d put your hands over your ears and made the La, La, La, La sound with your voice. Meaning I can’t hear you. In other words, you’re shutting out something you didn’t want to hear. Then when you’d become a teenager, you matured into the tuning out to your parent’s suggestions or instructions. We call what teenagers do selective hearing. And by the way many of us still do that throughout our adult life on a regular basis. However, it is not so much selective hearing as it is selective knowing. Follow me.

 I have found majority of American adults in my area, especially women choose the selective knowledge method. They choose it with excuses like:

            I don’t watch the news.

I don’t read…

You can’t always believe…

I don’t want to know.

I don’t know politics.

I didn’t see your text.

Email me that.

I’m just so busy.

But wait there’s more. Yet I’ll pause here.

Recently I was speaking with a dentist. Nowadays, good or bad it’s a freak event for me to be in a dental office. The dentist appeared to be early to mid-forties. Yet I found out that she was about age fifty-eight.  As we chatted intermittently I saw no lines on her face as were on mine.

 “Whoa! That’s a lot of porcelain.” She remarked.

 “Well, that’s what happens when you grow up with not much. We couldn’t afford dental care.” I volleyed back.  

“You could’ve used an orthodontist as a kid.” She stated, poking around.

“I think I had one cleaning in my first eighteen years and three visits for issues before I was eighteen.” I commented. She nodded.

“Wow! That’s some old metal.” She said.

“December 1991. I think it was the day after Christmas. I took my little sister to the movie theatre to see ‘Cape Fear’ with Robert DeNiro in it.” I replied.

“Looks like I can smooth it down and refill it. I’ll take x-rays just to make sure.” She stated.

“Okay. I know the exact date that tooth took a hit.” I added. Then I told her part of the story.

“You were what…?” The dentist a bit stunned, remarked.

“Yeah… So, the tooth didn’t seem to have an issue till it broke four months or so later in a movie theatre that day. So that filling is over 31 years old.” I said.

“It’s okay to take an x-ray with you. Isn’t’ it?” She asked.

“Yeah sure.” I replied.

 As she worked we chatted. She was up on the latest issues with our populous, and politics. I have to say, I was incredibly relaxed with her. She appeared the gentlest dentist I’d ever experienced. I knew she was good. She’d come highly recommended by a friend of mine a few years ago. It was the summer 2020 and I wanted our children to visit a dentist for adults as they were approaching eighteen years of age.

 Because of the pandemic the children missed their semiannual appointments scheduled for early March 2020. And we cancelled because of the risk to their father being terminal at the time.  We’d never missed their semi-annual dental appointments since the oldest was two and a half years of age.

 So, going back to all the adult excuses as to why many adults don’t know what’s happening outside their local world. I can say it’s more than bothersome to me. Part of being an adult, especially a parent, is knowing more than the local news. It’s investigating a variety of sources about global concerns that may likely affect our children and their futures.

 First, it is unhealthy and dangerous on every level to not know what’s happening globally. Second, an adult that doesn’t read regularly will become further and further behind the mental eight-ball. Third, to be doing La, La, La, La as an adult acting like a petulant child is not what the world needs. By the way, not reading current events regularly is like the ‘La, La, La, La’. And yes, you do owe that to the world which may as well include your children or then just yourself.

Quite often adults will make every excuse as to why they didn’t ingest proper food or water over time. Or they didn’t go for walks or exercise regularly. And then they’re remedied with medication. However, there are few safety nets to catch us—correcting the overall outcome of happenings outside of our community, let alone within our community. If we decide to be unaware of current events by not reading and researching outside of a couple sources—then society as a whole will be aided into avoidable pitfalls with our unwillingness to care. ---Jody-Lynn Reicher

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Completion of Humanness

Completion of Humanness As we arrive to the completion of the first year without Norman, I had decided long before he'd passed that I would continue to do things certain things he liked yet could no longer do. I decided I would not take a day off of fitness.  I would run at least for 500 days in a row. I began that in early 2020.  I'd not be concerned with the distance I'd run. It was the very thing I convinced Norman and the thing that mattered to him, from the very first discussion we had August 11th, 1981, was fitness. I loved that he was a College Boy. He loved that I was a Marine. We tickled each other's soul with such admirations. Later fitness continued as an old discussion from 1994 ...getting outside and to run no matter what. I would say to him, "Run 200 meters, then 400 meters. If it doesn't feel good, stop. Turn around and walk back home and know you did your best. That is all you can ask of yourself." I said this,  knowing he would get dow

In My World

As I finish putting away the week's groceries, I contemplate other's lives. Aside from my two daughters,  I consider what may be other's lives.  How they have conducted their lives over the past two years.  This is a thought not unusual for me to have. Yet, it occurs more often than not. Especially  now, as the population is probably feeling ever more irked. Regarding perhaps. their illusion of any lack of their freedom. But isn't that what life is about? The illusion of who we are. What we are about. Where we stand on the planet. Who we love. And who loves us. Our significance. Couldn't we imagine if this were all just an illusion? Sounds like a "Twighlight Zone" episode, perhaps. My aim here, are the thoughts of reckoning. I'll explain why I'm claiming such a thing. For about twenty-eight years of a career in dealing with injured athletes,  pain patients, chronically ill and the terminally ill. I found that there were many people who lied to

Christmas is Full of ...

  Christmas is full of wishes, hopes, dreams and perhaps joys. Things we desire and things we need. Everyday I awaken, I know I have more now than I had as a child—by far. We have two refrigerators, air-conditioning, nice heating system, colored television, three landlines to phones, relatively new cars that we paid in full upon purchase.   Yes, no debt outside the monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual bills to pay. I can drive to the food store. Our daughters have never or rarely ever; I can count on one hand that they had to get something for the house because I’d forgotten an item or couldn’t afford it on my weekly shopping list. We have three pets. Our daughters have and will have an incredible education—the choice of being studious is up to them.   We have a double oven. We have an attic and a basement. Our daughters work, not because they have to right now, but because they want to. We parents have had our own bedroom. We have two bathrooms. We have a washer and a dryer.