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