Alexis in the Sky With Diamonds

what I may look like in twenty-four hours

I was the victim of a freak accident at the very end of my workday earlier this evening, and now I'm in extreme pain. I didn't bother to fill a prescription for pain meds because I didn't think they would be needed. Suffice it to say that I was wrong. Dead wrong.

My supervising resident and I were going over charts. My presence isn't really needed in order for him to go over the charts, as the guy does not allow me  to actually write anything in a patient's chart, but he has been unbelievably reluctant to allow me to leave before his workday has finished even though my workday has usually started roughly two hours before his began. He invents work for me so that he can justify making me stay. He asked me to read all of the charts before he made notations and to comment. He then made his notations and asked me to read them. In most cases he wrote down what I said verbatim. The activity was a complete waste of my time.

For some reason unbeknownst to me, the resident had his laptop in the physicians' computer pod.  Residents don't usually need their personal laptops, but his was there, plugged in and charging. As he was finishing up, he picked up his laptop, apparently forgetting that it was plugged in. The adapter part of the charger flew off the table on which it had been resting. It swung and hit my left lateral malleolus (the wide protuberance of the fibula where it reaches the ankle) very hard and probably, judging from the residual bruise, struck my ankle with one of its edges. It was a relatively flukish occurrence -- probably not even in the top five of flukish accidents involving me, but still a rather freak happening. I don't think the two of us could recreate the mishap with the same outcome if we attempted it a hundred times.

My immediate reaction to the rendezvous between my fibula and the resident's charger was to fall to the floor, clutching my ankle, and to let loose with a string of expletives. The resident was at first taken aback by my choice of words and by the volume at which I unleashed them, and lost no time in rebuking me for having risked offending someone. Then another resident standing nearby took a closer look at my ankle and said it appeared to be broken. "No fucking way!" the supervising resident blurted out at roughly twice the volume I used in my expletive rant. I can only assume that the degree of affront caused by the utterance of expletives is to be considered inversely proportional to the importance of the person from whose mouth they emerge.

My supervising resident knelt to look at my ankle.  "With ankles the size of yours, " he rationalized, "you really should keep them covered for your own protection. My charger could not have hit you that hard.  This was not my fault.
You have defective bones."

"Way to blame the victim, spaz," another resident contributed.

Someone sent a nurse for a wheelchair and someone else got ice. I was taken to radiology and wheeled in ahead of God knows how many people who were waiting. I suppose there should be some advantage to having been maimed by a senior resident. A technician quickly took the necessary shots of my leg. The films were ready almost immediately. The residents huddled around them. My supervising resident was incredulous at what he saw. "It had to have been broken before my charger hit her!" he insisted.

"Right," another resident responded. "Your charger just happened to hit her foot in exactly the place where the bone had previously been broken. She managed to work all day on a broken fibula without once complaining about it. You realize how stupid that sounds, don't you?"

The supervising resident then turned to me. "You know I didn't do this on purpose, I hope," he told me.

I laughed. "You couldn't have done it on purpose if you had tried," I answered.

The jerk actually argued that he could have purposely have done it if he had tried. I didn't even engage him. I looked away and let him talk to the wall. It's the same moron who insisted that there's no such thing as perfect pitch. He would argue with a cadaver if there were no live body present.

"I'm really sorry," he said for the first time.  

I accepted his apology. Someone went to show the X-ray to the orthopedic resident who was on the floor. I was moved from the X-ray room to an empty exam table. The orthopedic resident came in and poked and prodded, then felt my toes to ensure that the blood supply was getting through. He told someone to put a temporary cast on it and said I needed to be seen in two days. He said that someone needed to give me a prescription for hydrocodone. I said I wouldn't need it. He told me to fill it anyway. I didn't. 

He was right and I was wrong. I've been awake with my entire leg throbbing all night. I suspect that in addition to the fracture, I did some additional damage when I fell. Matthew has to be at work at 6:30. He will drop my prescription off then. I'll get someone to bring the goods here for me.

The resident told me not even to think about showing up tomorrow (which is now today). Someone drove me home in my car. I'm not sure how the person got back, but I don't him lurking outside, so I assume that someone must have picked him up. 

I've been watching youtube videos all night in a futile attempt to distract myself from the pain. I had forgotten how much fractures hurt. I still think I'd take a fracture over a perforated intestine as long as it's not a spine, skull, hip, or pelvis fracture, but it's far from a fun way to spend an evening. I don't plan to be in pain tomorrow night. By this time tomorrow I will probably have kaleidoscope eyes.

Make Love, Not War

The child pictured here is not my mom, as my mom doesn't allow pictures of her to be posted on my blog. it might just as well have been my mom. I'm told that she was one of the original flower children. She used to write "Make Love, Not War" and draw peace signs with chalk on the sidewalks outside her family's home when she was two. (She was precocious to the extent that she made me look like a late-bloomer by comparison.)  Her political expressions didn't go over terribly well, as her father was an air force pilot, and her family lived in base-owned housing at the time. 

The local Catholic school that educated her siblings allowed her to enroll in kindergarten a year early because their enrollment in kindergarten was low that year. Most of the year was uneventful for her, as she did her work quietly and didn't bother others. 

My aunt said there was a problem once because my mom wrote once "Free Love" on the top of her spelling test. The nun who taught her class insisted that when she got home, she must ask her mother what was the meaning of the term "Free Love," then come back and report it to the class the next day. Her mother told her that "Free Love" meant living with a person of the opposite sex when the two were not married. i'm not sure exactly what the nun/teacher hoped to accomplish by this, but by the end of the day, every kid in the class who could write was writing "Free Love" on his or her paper, and they all knew what it meant, or at least knew the G-rated definition of the term.. They apparently told their parents that Erin had taught it to them. 

Several of the parents called my grandmother to complain about her daughter providing sex education to their offspring. (My mom did not yet have a clue as to the mechanics of sex.) My grandma pretty much passed the buck and blamed the nun/teacher. She told the other parents her daughter had only written the slogan on her own paper, but that the nun had called attention to it and made a huge deal out of it, requiring that my mom recite the definition of "Free Love" in front of the class.

Still, my grandmother had better things to do than to field phone calls from irate parents of my mom's classmates, so she taught my mom a few other slogans to write. My mom learned "Flower Power," ''Groovy,' "Sock It To Me," 'Smile! God Loves You," "Have a Nice Day," "Right On," "Stamp Out Reality," "Sock It To Me," and others. One mother of a classmate eventually called to complain about my mom teaching her kid to say, "Look it up in your Funk & Wagnall." (The kid was too dumb to write that or anything else, including his own name.) My grandma was at an officers' wives' club meeting that night, and my grandfather had to take the call. He was dumbfounded, but eventually got a word in edgewise in order to tell the woman that "Funk and Wagnall" was a publisher of encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference materials. The rather dim bulb thought the term was some sort of expletive. 

Children's vocabularies can be modified, but stupidity is often irreparable.

I don't own this video. I sincerely hope the rightful owner is not offended by my use of it. i added this video after posting because I found it after the fact, but it perfectly depicts the scene of which my mother would have loved to have been a part had she not been less than a year old during the summer of love. she would have enjoyed participating even as a child, but she was born to an air force officer. Alas, some things are not meant to be.

I don't own this video. I included it because it features my mom's favorite song from when she was little. I hope the owner does not object to my use of the video.

Tone Deafness Versus Tune Deafness

I mentioned in my most recent post that true tone deafness does not exist except where actual deafness exists. since then I've researched the concept a bit further. According to research, my statement was correct, but my rationale for it may have been somewhat flawed, or at least not in total accord with the current school of thought as espoused by the expert.

True tone deafness does not exist separately from actual deafness primarily because almost anyone, once taught the musical concepts of "higher' and "lower" in relation to pitch, basically anyone who can hear the pitches can determine the higher or lower of the two except possibly with intervals of only one-half step. Furthermore, few people need to be taught the concept of "higher" or 'lower" in pitch, and nearly all can differentiate between higher and lower even with one-half-step intervals. still, it would be unfair to classify a person as possessing the quality f tone deafness without first ascertaining a basic understanding of the underlying concepts.

I stated in my most recent blog that most people can hear when others sing or play an incorrect note. Such is apparently not always the case. I found a video of a young woman who plays the clarinet. She sometimes adds flats or misses sharps. She doesn't hear the melodic changes (usually not for the better) that are created in doing so.If you know the hymn she is playing, you will hear the A-flat concert (B-flat on clarinet) that should be A-natural concert (or B-natural on clarinet). I would like to have selected a more well-known hymn for non-LDS readers, but for some reason, the young woman who made this video favors they hymns in the LDS hymnal that are not in common with other denominations. C'est dommage!

                      I do not own this video. I hope that I have offended no one in borrowing it.

Perfect Pitch; What does it mean, and is it even real?

As I was reviewing patient charts on Thursday, a member of my cohort who had just finished his gastroenterology rotation came into the conference area where I was looking over records after the supervising resident physician made notations.  The resident looked up and briefly greeted him. My cohort-mate said to the resident, "So you're working with Alexis now."

It was a bit of a Captain Obvious moment, as there would have been no other logical reason for the two of us to have been simultaneously in the physician's computer pod and passing patient records to one another, but the resident let it go. "Yes," he responded to the preceding comment with no perceivable enthusiasm.

"Alexis is a musician," my colleague told my superior. "She has perfect pitch."

"There's no such thing as perfect pitch," the resident intoned.

"Really?" I queried, though not with any marked incredulity, as I've heard the line before.  

It's all a matter of semantics, though in this case it's also a matter of the resident physician's ignorance as to what is meant by perfect pitch. I don't typically  use the term perfect pitch because it's an imprecise and sometimes misunderstood term. 

I prefer the term absolute pitch over perfect pitch. Absolute pitch refers  to a person's ability to reproduce a given musical tone or to identify a given tone without external reference. A person who can spontaneously produce a given note within a quarter-tone of standard pitch is usually considered to possess the skill of absolute pitch. Likewise, anyone who consistently identifies notes without external reference also would be said to possess the trait. Regardless, the only arguable point in reference to absolute pitch is the criteria used in measuring or determining who is in possession of the skill.  The concept of absolute pitch exists. Some individuals possess the ability to identify pitches or to produce tones spontaneously.

Relative pitch refers to a person's ability to hear notes in relation to one another. This pertains both to the concept of identifying specific tones on a scale as well as to the premise of pitch in reference to a specific note.  When musical tone is produced by voice or by any instrument for which a tone is not fixed, the pitch may, obviously, be higher or lower in relation to any other tone. A person with a strong sense of relative pitch possesses the ability to match pitch vocally or mechanically with accuracy to a greater degree than does a person with a weaker sense of relative pitch. It could be argued that anyone who is not clinically deaf probably possesses some degree of relative pitch. Relative pitch is, as is absolute pitch, a very real concept, and its existence is not a point for debate.

Tone deafness is another pitch-related concept. In actuality the concept is something of a misnomer.  True tone deafness exists, for the most part, only where actual deafness exists.  If a person truly lacked the ability to hear and to differentiate between tones, the first seven notes of "Old McDonald" would sound identical to the first seven notes of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."  Almost anyone who knows both songs will hear the distinction between the two. What is
most commonly equated with tone deafness is the inability to sing on key or to match pitch. Yet people who cannot sing on key can usually tell if someone else is not singing on key. Singing is a complex skill -- both a motor skill and an auditory skill. Individuals who lack the ability to sing on key either cannot hear themselves as others hear them when they produce vocal tones, or they lack the motor ability to control their voices precisely, or both.  Some accomplished musicians cannot sing on key.* Others can eventually find a pitch with their voices but cannot hit a note cleanly at the outset. Other people can come close to maching a pitch, but cannot differentiate between the production of a tone that is mildly sharp or flat as opposed to producing the identical tone, or matching the pitch. Some people have more refined senses of relative pitch than do others. It doesn't mean that the others are tone deaf, though,  unless they're actually clinically deaf.

I suspect that any confusion over the reality of perfect pitch occurs  as a result of the occasional practice of referring to a person's highly refined sense of relative pitch as perfect pitch. 

One of the nurses with whom I worked in my dermatology rotation recently spoke to me of the violin studies of her ten-year-old son, Ian. The nurse's child was studying violin under the tutelage of the nurse's fiance. "My fiance doesn't believe in perfect pitch," the nurse told me, "but he says that Ian's pittch is pretty darn good."

Along those same lines, when I was a child, I read If You Could See What I Hear, which is the autobiography of blind singer Tom Sullivan (on which the subsequently produced and heavily panned movie of the same name was based.) Sullivan related the story of his being evaluated for placement in a choir by being asked to match the tones produced on a piano by the choir director. The  choir director told Sullivan, based on his vocal reproduction of the piano tones, that he had perfect pitch. 

I asked my mom, who was the only parent home at the time, how a person could possibly tell that another had perfect pitch simply by having the person hum or sing notes that were played on a piano. My understanding of perfect pitch had been that it equated with a sense of abolute pitch, and reproducing the notes one heard would be no evidence whatsoever of anyone's sense of absolute pitch. My mom explained the concept of relative pitch to me, and said that some people considered a refined sense of relative pitch to mean perfect pitch, but that it was a misuse of the term. She explained why, in musical academia, the terms absolute pitch and relative pitch were used instead of perfect pitch.

But what if we agreed,  for the sake of argument,  to equate perfect pitch with highly refined relative pitch? Would that, then, support the premise of my supervising attending physician (and of Ian's mother's fiance) and others that perfect pitch is a myth and an unattainable standard, and that no one actually possesses it -- that perfect is, like infinity, an unreachable quality or quantity? No; even equating perfect pitch with relative pitch would not create an unattainable standard, thereby negating the existence of the skill of perfect pitch. If pitch existed only in the ears of those who heard it,  and pitch couldn't be quantified or measured, perhaps the non-existence of the skill of perfect pitch could be supported.  Instruments exist, however,  to measure any pitch's vibrations in a given interval of time, thereby availing the option of standardizing pitch. Likewise, the capacity to measure or to document a person's perception of pitch exists as well.

Again, because pitch can be precisely measured, an individual's perception of pitch can likewise be measured. Hence, even if we used highly refined sense of relative pitch as our standard for perfect pitch, people exist whose senses of relative pitch allow them to differentiate between pitches with differences as minute as a single rotation per minute. Some people can actually hear the difference between four-hundred-forty rotations per minute and for-hundred-forty-one rotations per minute. People with such refined auditory perception are few and far between, but they do exist, which is proof positive that perfect pitch exists regardless of whether its definition is encompaased by the parameters of relative pitch or of absolute pitch. I assume that both my supervising resident physician and my nurse acquaintance's fiance are operating under the assumption that however refined a is person's capacity to distinguish  pitch, it could be better still. Maybe or maybe not, but if a person can auditorially differentiate between one-hundred-thirty-nine, one-hundred-forty, and one-hundred-forty-one vibrations per second,  both Ian's mother's fiance and my supervising resident physician are wrong no matter what is the agreed-upon definition of perfet pitch.

I really couldn't care less about what the resident physician thinks about perfect pitch or about any other aspect of music except that most people who waste time and energy arguing that  perfect pitch does not exist do so because they don't have it. They believe that because they don't possess it, perfect pitch is therefore not real, and no one else can have it, either. I do not need for my supervising intern to hate me just because I have a better sense of pitch than he does. 





*Composer Burt Bacharach was known for his ability to compose and to play the piano both by reading standard music notation and by ear, but couldn't sing on-key.



**The hertz (the symbol of which is Hz) is the standard unit of frequency for reference purposes, defined as one cycle per second.

Bullying, Teen Suicide, and Other Societal Plagues

My heart bleeds for anyone whose life has been significantly harmed by bullying of any kind. All of us have probably been bullied to some degree, but some of us have suffered far more than others have. I was lucky. While I had "brainy-and- physically-weak nerd" metaphorically scrawled all over me, I came of age in a smallish university town that might best be described as an intellectual enclave. The jocks, the snobbish girls, and even the thugs existed in my hometown, but they were outnumbered by studious types and didn't have the momentum or power that those same groups had in other places.

Bullying in general, and cyber-bullying in particular, have led to considerable heartache for many young people, and have led or contributed to dire consequences for some. Consensus as to where lies the rightful blame is difficult to establish. In the end, except perhaps in a court of law, blame  may not be all that important, anyway. For those whose lives have been lost to this horrendous plague, we can only mourn. For those whose youths were tarnished by the same, we can only hope that the empowerment of adulthood more than compensates for lost innocence in what should have been the proverbial wonder years. 

Society as a whole is working hard to educate young people regarding the dire consequences of cruelty to others. Parents, physicians and counselors, school personnel, child and adolescent advocates, and others strive to educate themselves and colleagues about both the overt and the less conspicuous signs that a young person may be suffering from the effects of bullying or may himself or herself be guilty of perpetrating acts of bullying against others. The latter group -- those guilty of perpetrating acts of bullying against others -- has been somewhat tougher to identify and address. Parents are, as a group, not especially reluctant to admit or to accept when their offspring are victims of force, threat, or coercion with the intent of abuse, intimidation, aggressive domination, or ostracism [paraphrase of author's definition of bullying]. Acts of wrongdoing don't occur in a vacuum, however; if one person's child is a victim of bullying, another person's child  (or --think Cain and Abel here-- another of that person's children) -- violated society's rules of fair play. While parents are to be applauded for recognizing and responding to the victimization of their children, they need to be equally vigilant in recognizing and responding to acts of perpetration by their offspring. 

Thirty-or-so years ago , young people were expected to handle their own social interactions. Adults presumed that children and youth possessed the abilities to work things out for themselves. If a particular young person seemed to be a frequent target or victim of any sort of persecution, adults assumed that the young person was doing something to invite such mistreatment, or, at the very least, was responding to it in such a way as to invite further mistreatment.  And while there might have been a shred of truth to the idea that victims were not often randomly selected, and usually there was a reason [I'm not suggesting it was necessarily ever a good reason, but often there was a reason] as to why a given kid was singled out for bullying, those reasons, under the microsope of more than a generation's worth of analysis, do not hold up as anything resembling justification for the torture suffered by countless youth. 

We, as a society, have evolved, and are no longer, in most cases, leaving known victims of bullying to fend for themselves. While  the approaches may vary greatly in effectiveness, most schools have, at the very least, anti-bullying policies in effect. Children are encouraged to speak up or to alert adults if they or anyone else are being victimized by bullies. Most parents, one would hope, feel sufficiently empowered to speak to school authorities if their children are victimized by acts of bullying. Children are told to inform adults if it is happening to them. Teachers are told to inform their superiors of acts of bullying. Those charged with supervising groups of young people are educated as to how to identify less conspicuous manifestations of bullying that might have gone undetected in previous eras. All of these measures are necessary and are the very least we as a responsible society must do to safeguard our young people. But are these measures enough?

Beginning earlier but peaking in the 1940's and 1950's, the disease of poliomyelitis, known alternately as infantile paralysis and simply polio, reached epidemic proportions, killing or paralyzing hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year.  Those who were not afflicted lived in fear of the dreaded disease. Clearly something had to be done.

What was actually done to fight polio?  Medical science has yet to discover an actual cure. Treatment is still aimed at symptom relief. Polio is caused by a virus, but we lack a specific retroviral drug to combat the disease. Experts discovered that the disease is transmitted through fecal-oral contamination, through oral-oral contamination, or through nasal-oral or nasal-nasal contamination.  It was certainly efficacious for the medical authorities to know how poliomyelitis was transmitted, but that knowledge alone wasn't sufficiently effective in thwarting polio. Yet we don't have a great deal of polio around today. What accounted for the disease becoming essentially a non-issue at least in developed nations?

As treatment and transmission were addressed by others, Jonas Salk and Alber Sabin were hard at work to develop vaccines, which would protect those who took the vaccines against the disease. Salk's injectable version of the vaccine became available in 1955. Sabin's oral version debuted in 1961. Variations of the vaccines are still in use today and are the reason a disease that once claimed hundreds of thousands of victims each year had only thirty-six reported cases in 2016. * 

How, then,  can the principle of inocculation against poliomyelitis be applied to the concept of bullying? Wouldn't it be nice if every child could be given an injection or a vial of oral medication that would prevent them from ever being tormented by bullies? While the disease of polio would seem to be every bit as complex as is the plague of bullying, the solution is obviously not quite so simple as giving a child a dose of medication at a few carefully spaced intervals in his or her infancy and childhood and expecting it to effectively combat the problem . . . or is it? A vaccine to combat the effects of bullying that can be administered orally or by injection does not exist, at least within the current constraints of medical science. The prevention of bullying cannot presently, if ever, be carried out with the distribution of mass-marketed containers of inactivated or weakened strains of the bullying virus. Is there, however, a way that we can metaphorically inactivate the potentially ravaging effects of bullying in our young people? Would it hurt to try? Can we afford not to try?

It would make sense to start with what we know presently about the very most damaging effects of bullying. What's the very worst thing that can ever happen as a result of bullying? We could probably agree that it would be loss of life: either a victim of bullying takes his or her own life, or he or she commits an act of violence against others after having been victimized to the point of not knowing what else to do. What caused the bully to reach such a state of desperation? Was it repeated text messages telling the victim that he was no longer welcome on this planet? Was it months or years of social media harassment? Or was it face-to-face acts of force, threats, or, coercion? Identifying a pathogen, whether physical or symbolic, would seem to be the first step in devising a future preventive measure against it.

Those charged with caring for, educating, and socializing today's young people are, for the most part **  doing their best to deal with bullying as it occurs.   We recognize that it is a very real concern. We're not looking the other way whenever it happens.  While there is room for improvement in our response to bullying, for the most part we're confronting it as we see it. We're also trying to teach our children not to be bullies. 

But what can we do for children that will cause the words of bullies to have less impact on them? How can we tell children, years before they ever hear the ugly words of bullies, that the bullies they will oneday hear will be liars? That, despite what any bully will one day tell them, they will not be stupid, skanky, or worthless?  How can we firmly plant in our children's minds that, no matter what any future bully says to the contrary, the world will not be a better place without them?***

I shall carry the polio analogy a bit further at this time. My implications here are radical, I acknowledge. Still,  if we wage a war against bullying through mass education yet ignore another key element in the very most devastating of potential effects of cyber-bullying, what we have done is akin to vaccinating our children against polio, yet knowingly allowing polio-contaminated fecal matter into the very areas in which we prepare and store the food that our children will eat. The very best of vaccines are still only ninety per cent or so effective. Would you trust your child's polio vaccine so much that you would allow polio- contaminated feces to be brought into your kitchen?

While a child or teen, in order to remain safe, may possibly need a cell phone in his or her possession when he or she is out in the world so that parents may contact the child at any time or vice versa, or so that the child may summon help as needed, the child does not have that same need when he or she is with parents in the home. If another kid really needs to reach your child, perhaps the kid could do so by telephoning via the family line. Likewise, perhaps we need to re-think the concept of each child using his or her laptop in the privacy of his or her room.  Perhaps all computers should be used in common areas, and perhaps they should be either locked away or password-protected to disable use when parents are not present.

It is naive even to imagine that we could ever go back to the way things used to be, with a single family computer and one phone line. On the other hand, we know that, in part anyway, suicides have happened when bullying found its way into the victims' homes through technology. It's a question each parent must ask and answer for himself, but if you asked the parent of any child who was driven to kill himself as a result of cyber-bullying if he or she would, if do-overs were possible, eliminate social media and texting from the home, what do you think the answer would be? 

Furthermore, does any minor child really need Facebook or any parallel social medium?

I'm a mere twenty-two years old. I hold a few lousy bachelor's degrees but am still almost a year away even from having completed my formal education. My real-life experience is practically nonexistent.  I've never had even a truly significant romatic relationship, much less a child. At this point, someone with far greater knowledge, wisdom,  experience, and expertise needs to confiscate my platform. I haven't a clue as to how to implement the suggestions I've offered, but someone out there does. The problem will probably never be eliminated entirely, but we're going to continue to lose our children and youth at an alarming rate until this issue is adequately addressed.


* vaccines are, at best, only ninety per cent [or so] effective. If parents become either stupid or selfish or both in regard to having their children vaccinated against polio, we could easily face another epidemic.

** Some are obviously doing a better job than are others.

*** "Just say no to drugs" had limited success, but maybe "Just say no to bullying" will be more successful.

Only YOU Can Prevent Cyber-Bullying!

I am, as is everyone I know, opposed to bullying in every form. Cyber-bullying, which seems at the present to be the prevalent form of bullying, is ugly and invasive, yet is also difficult to define. Sadly, many parents consider bullying as something other people's children do  Few parents seem equate the actions of their own offspring with cyber-bullying, or seem willing to consider that their own children are capable an act of such anti-social  proportions. Cyber-bullying is what happens to one's child as opposed to what one's child perpetrates against another kid.

Moreover, the term bullying is an imperfect and imprecise term, existing sometimes primarily in the eye of the beholder. When does a text message or interaction on social media cross the line between free speech and cyber-bullying?  Kids insult one another. My parents and their peers did it, my acquaintances and I did as well, as do today's kids.  Today's youth are more seriously harmed by the insults that occur via texting or social media because it is so difficult to escape. They're also more severely harmed by it, in my opinion, because they've been raised as precious and protected entities (snowflakes) who are unable to withstand any negative feedback whatsoever. I'm not suggesting that it's in any way acceptable for groups of youth to torment a single youth and to attempt to persuade the youth to end his or her life. Such is so clearly over the line that there's no real defense for it.  

But what about the insults that aren't particularly threatening and are not suggesting that the recipient remove himself or herslef from the planet?  I have, as has almost everyone, been on the receiving end of insults on occasion. When I was in seventh-grade, in a classroom political debate that, through very poor supervision on the part of an incompetent teacher, quickly degraded into an exchange of barbs, I was first called "Anorexis" by a rather clever classmate. (I've always been naturally thin.) The name quickly caught on. I maintained my composure throughout the day as the moniker gained momentum, but went crying to my mother's office immediately following school. My mom wisely did not plant herself in the principal's office of my school the following day.  While she was appropriately sympathetic with my plight, she told me that how much and how brutally I would be tormented with the insult was almost entirely contingent upon my reaction to it. She said that i needed either to laugh it off, to act bored by it, or, if a person persisted in insulting me, to retaliate in kind, but that it would serve me well to hide any anger or hurt feelings when doing so. She told me that, in the unlikely event that I was ever in trouble for responding to an oral insult with one of my own invention, as long as I wasn't profane or didn't capitalize on anyone's legitimate disability, she and my father would stand by me. My not-particularly-kind peers soon learned the hard way that they couldn't win a war of insults with me.  I'm not proud of having made other kids cry, but sometimes hurtful words can be effectively countered only with other hurtful words.

I didn't have texting capacity on my cell phone during most of my school days. Rare if not unheard-of is the middle-class teen in today's world who does not have access to text-capable phones and social media. Parents are quick to allow access to such media, but then are quick to complain when their offspring face victimization through channels they, the parents, allowed.  In particular, parents are quick to blame school personnel for cyber-bullying. In almost no cases are school personnel legitimately at fault for cyber-bullying.  Even if it doesn't happen during non-school times (which it usually does), it happens almost exclusively with the use of technological devices provided to young people by parents, not by the school system. Do parents think it is fair if their own offspring are disciplined by school administrators monitoring social media or text message exchanges happening during non-school hours? The answer is almost universally no. Why, then would parents expect the school to discipline someone else's kid for the same thing? The school lacks jurisdiction in most instances of cyber-bullying.

I shall share a slightly convoluted story involving one of my relatives and improper use of technology. My mom has been a school psychologist and school administrator. When almost any person in my extended family has an issue with anything happening at their children's  school, the person typically phones my mom for advice. In a recent happening, my cousin, who is a teacher of advanced mathematics in a high school, answered her door to find her district superintendent [and boss] on her doorstep. The superintendent presented my cousin with a display of obscene and threatening text mesages on his own daughter's cell phone , which came from my cousin's son's cell phone number. The girl had recently broken off a relationship with my cousin's son. When he was confronted, my cousin's son said that his cell phone had been stolen. My cousin believed him, but her husband, the boy's father, didn't. He searched the kid's room and found the cell phone. My cousin's kid then said it must have been one of his friends who stole the phone and left the messages, and the friend must then have hidden the phone in my cousin's kid's room. 

My cousin believed her son. My mom told her that was ridiculous. My mom also asked my cousin if her kid had ever lost his phone previously. My cousin answered affirmatively. My mom asked how she learned that her son had lost his phone the previous time. My cousin answered that her son immediately asked for a new phone. My mom asked her why the son didn't ask for a new phone this time. My cousin still tried to make excuses, but my mom told her she was ignoring logic as well as enabling her kid un unlawful and unacceptable behavior. 

My point here isn't that my cousin is stupid, though she behaved stupidly in the particular instance. The point is that a normally intelligent person [my cousin] was willing to believe improbable and absurd lies her kid told,  which made no sense at all, because parents often don't want to believe that their own offspring are capable of anti-social behavior. If cyber-bullying is as rampant as it is said to be, however, someone has to be guilty of committing the actual bullying. The parents of the world need to acknowledge that their kids are capable of being the victims as well as the perpetrators.

Parents need to monitor their kids' online and cell-phone activity.  When I was in high school, my brother and I didn't own our own computers and had to use those belonging to our parents when we needed online access. Both my parents' computers were equipped with programs that tracked every keystroke typed on their computers, every bit of pasted text, and every website visited. They checked their computers at least every other day. My brother had a phone with text capacity, but every text he sent or received went also to a program on my mom's computer. We weren't allowed to use Facebook.  Had my brother or I been on either the giving or receiving end of text-cyber-bullying, my parents would likely have known.  Too many of today's parents are not similarly vigilant.

Parents are the only ones who have any real power to stop cyber-bullying. Those parents who lack the technological skill to employ the tools necessary to monitor their offspring should either acquire those skills or should limit the access of their own offspring to tools they, the parents, fully understand, or, at the very least, should impose limitations once their offspring have abused cyber-privileges in any way. Access to technology for youth should be viewed as a privilege and not as an absolute right.

Reality TV from the White House

One of the CNN pundits referred to the staffing of the West Wing positions of the White House as Survivor:White House.  The comment wasn't far from actuality. What's happening at 1600 Pennsylvanie Avenue has sunk to the levels of reality TV programming.  To me, the premise seems less like Survivor than an old ABC reality series The Family, the premise of which was that, unbeknownst to the family members competing for a lucrative prize, the servants on staff in the mansion were charged with determining those voted off as well as the eventual winner. It's not that anything so noble as having the domestic staff vote contestants out of a competition based on rude, condescending, and otherwise inappropriate behavior is what is happening in today's White House. The likeness is more in that those who are being kicked off White House payroll don't necessarily know in advance who has the authority to exclude them. 

All of this would be entertaining were it not that the business of these people is supposed to be to run our nation rather than to entertain anyone.  I understand why North Korea is working around the clock to perfect their long-range missiles. This would seem the perfect time for any of our enemies to strike.  The staff members of the executive branch of our govermnet are likely far too preoccupied with protecting their own interests and preserving their own jobs to have the capacity to adequately advise the president. 

And as to the president himself, I don't even know where to begin. Perhaps it shouldn't have come as a surprise that a man who hosted a reality show in which his signature line was "You're fired!" would turn the human resources department of the White House into a revolving door.

The only person in the White House for whom I have anything resembling respect is Sarah Huckabee Sanders.  She has almost certainly sold her soul to the devil in a metaphorical sense by accepting any position whatsoever in the Trump campaign or administration, and she's going to find herself in the position of having to speak untruths even if unwittingly. Still, she seems to be a decent human being and a person of substance.

As far as Scaramucci is concerned, good riddance. 

Disclosure, Ethics, and Other Difficulties Plaguing the Trump White House

“There are so many qualified men and women who wanted to serve this president, this administration and their country who have been completely demoralized and completely, I think, disinclined to do so, based on the paperwork that we have to put forward, divesting assets, the different hoops you have to run through,” Conway said. “This White House is transparent and accountable, and we’ve all complied with those rules, but it has disincentivized good men and women. I hope it doesn’t disincentivize Anthony.”  -Kellyanne Conway, july 27, 2017 [italics added]

dis·in·cen·tiv·ize

disinˈsen(t)ivīz/

verb

discourage (a person or course of action) by removing an incentive.

In what way does requiring disclosure remove an incentive? Requiring disclosure might very well dissuade or discourage a person who had something to hide from doing that for which the disclosure was a requirement, but how does it remove an incentive? Does Kellyanne conway think that randomly tossing five-syllable words into a conversation increases her credibility?

Malapropism notwithstanding, is Kellyanne Conway's point that a requirement to conduct one's affairs in an ethical manner discourages potential public servants from filling government positions? If so, I would view that as being clearly a positive effect of the requirement of public disclosure.

On Sunday, Kellyanne Conway debated CNN anchor Brian Stelter regarding the truth, lies, and scandals as conveyed by Donald J. Trump.

STELTER: "The scandals are about the President's lies. About voter fraud, about wiretapping, his repeated lies about those issues. That's the scandal."

CONWAY: "[Donald Trump] doesn't think he's lying about those issues, and you know it."

That's her best defense of Trump? Seriously?

Fidget spinners may be dangerous! *

* for  idiots

The most recent toy craze  of which I'm aware is that of the fidget spinners that seem to be everywhere. Every child over the age of five that I've seen in a medical practice in the past two months has toted at least one of the small devices in his or her possession. The spinners are apparently made by multiple manufacturers. I don't know if someone's patent attempt failed or if no one bothered to patent the design in the first place. Because the devices are made and sold by multiple outlets, there doesn't seem to be any consensus as to what should be the minimum age for using the devices independently, and there seems to be a bit of a quality control issue where some of the manufacturing jobs are concerned.

A young girl's mother has charged that the spinning fidgets are unsafe because her ten-year-old daughter put one in her mouth to clean it, it came apart, and one of the device's weighted bearings became lodged in the girl's throat. The girl underwent an endoscopy procedure to have the small part, which was approximately the size of a quarter, removed from her esophagus.  Yes, you read correctly that the child was ten years old. Yes you read correctly that the girl put the device in her mouth to clean it. You also read correctly that the girl's mother is blaming the manufacturer of the toy for the girl having inadvertently ingested the bearing piece from the toy.

When I was two years old, I was being driven back to my grandparents' home from  a birthday party in Utah by my Aunt Claudine.  I had in my hands a small cellophane bag that contained the party favor, which was a set of jacks. My aunt Claudine looked in her rear view mirror just in time to see me putting one of the jacks into my mouth. (That was unusual behavior for me. I typically had to be bribed even to put food in my mouth.) "Alexis, take that out of your mouth RIGHT NOW!" my aunt hollered at me. "It'll slip down your throat, and they'll have to cut you open to get it out. They might not even have time to knock you out first!" It was certainly a scare tactic, and perhaps overkill where a two-year-old was concerned, but it worked. It's the end result that matters where child safety is concerned. But wait, it gets better. "And besides," my aunt continued, "a [insert whatever derogatory name for any person of any different race that you would like to use; I'm not using the word my aunt used] might have touched that before it got put in the package." I was unsure of why it mattered that a person of that particular race had touched the jack, but the idea of anyone having touched the item was enough to make me think it shouldn't have been in my mouth. Your mouth is where you put things that are already clean, not a place you put things in order to get them clean. I would have expected a ten-year-old to know that.

An eleven-year-old boy in Australia threw his fidget spinner in the air. It came down and hit him in the eye, nearly causing a serious injury. His mother blames the toy,or more precisely, the toy manufacturer, for not posting some sort of warning that the toy can be dangerous because if a person tosses the spinner up into the air, it [DUH!] comes down.  Most of us have at least a basic understanding of  the practical applications of gravity and that an object tossed into the air will eventually make its way back down. I would say that perhaps sir Isaac Newton's work is not so esteemed in Australia as it is here in the U.S., but: A) I highly doubt that such is the case, and B) it's actually something of a relief to have someone who says or does something really stupid not to be an American for once. We generally have the stupidest people on the planet here; it's nice for Australia to take that particular monkey off our backs if only for this one time.

People who do not have children are often self-proclaimed experts concerning what children should or should not do. We often are incredibly quick to assert what our own future children will or will not do, and what we will do about it if they do those things that we say they will never do. I've seen many of my former fellow future parents go on to become actual parents and to eat their own words in more ways that I had previously imagined were possible.  For that reason, I'm ever so slightly reluctant to say that my future child will not, at the age of ten or at any other age, put a toy in her mouth (to clean it, no less) and accidentally ingest a part of the toy in the process. My child might also unsheathe a blade of a Swiss army knife, toss it in the air, and injure himself or herself or anyone unlucky enough to be in the vicinity when what went up ultimately came back down. While I would love to believe that I am incapable of producing a child who is stupid enough to have done what either of the two children discussed previously here have done, we know that there are absolutely no guarantees when it comes to reproduction.  (I witnessed this first-hand when my father [who has maxed out every IQ test he has ever been given]  sired my brother [who wouldn't max out an IQ test if someone handed him the answer key right in the middle of the test. If anything, handing my brother the answer key would confuse him and cause him to score even more poorly than the dismally low score he would have gotten on his own].) My child might very well someday do something every bit as stupid as what either of those children did. Kids are inherently stupid. 

What I will say is that I will not be as stupid as are the parents of either child. If I become a parent and if, or more likely when, my child does something incredibly stupid, I vow to be grateful if luck has worked in my favor and the child and anyone near him escaped the act of stupidity with no permanent damage, and to allow my child to own the age-appropriate stupidity (if, for example, it's an eighteen-month-old child playing with a sharp or choke-able object, the stupidity is on me and not on the child) of his or her foolish act. It's only when we're allowed to own our behaviors that we can learn from them. The best way to ensure a state of perpetual and permanent stupidity for one's offspring is to blame someone else for their foolish behaviors.  

If I change my tune and join the side of the enablers if or when I someday become a parent, I invite anyone who knows me to call me on it. I will deserve it.

Kelli Ward: Ambulance-Chasing Vulture Extraordinare

I consider Kelli Ward to be a far more literal ambulance chaser. 

The preceding illustration may be somewhat misleading. Regardless of whomever created the graphic display, and for whatever reasons he or she operated under the mistaken or outdated impression that Sarah Palin was, for reasons unbeknownst to me, the reigning ambulance chaser of U.S. politics, such is no longer [if ever it was] the case. I am uncertain as to anyone's reasoning as to why that designation should ever have  belonged to Sarah Palin. History, notwithstanding, this honor now has a new recipient.  The title quite rightfully belongs to Arizona state senator Kelli Ward.

In 2016, Kelli Ward had an unsuccessful bid in the republican primary for John McCain's senate seat.  She has since announced her intent to challenge Jeffry Flake for his senate seat in 2018. Meanwhile, Ward has sniffed out a potentially more direct route to the U.S. Sentate.  In wake of the recent announcement of John McCain's glioblastoma, Ward declared on an Indiana radio talk show that McCain should step aside "as soon as possible."  Should McCain actually resign, only Arizona Governor Doug Ducey stands between Kelli Ward and the U.s. Senate. Please join me in prayer, karmic thought, or any other powers of intersession in which anyone out there places faith, for the benefit of the soundness of mind of Arizona's governor.

Did Kelli Ward believe that this declaration via a radio program, followed by a written statement from her, would be a politically expedient move? Was Ward under the assumption that she was the only person on whom the thought of McCain's resignation had dawned? Did she really think that the rest of us [I use the pronoun us to include myself because even someone so politically inept as I had entertained the possibility that McCain might consider his time and energy better spent somewhere other than in or on the U.S. Senate. Still, I wouldn't have suggested his resignation publicly, and I have nothing to gain by his resignation or to lose by the suggestion of it. 

Ward has everything to gain by McCain's resignation (except that Arizona's governor may value his own reputation too much to appoint her as his successor even of McCain chooses to resign), and every bit as much to lose by appearing as the unrelenting opportunist that she apparently is by offering the suggestion. Did it not occur to Ward that someone else likely would have made the same suggestion, even if not publicly, thereby sparing her the public relations nightmare she has created for herself? Did she honestly consider that her on-air proclamation and follow-up written statement were politically prudent moves? Is this woman authentically stupid?

In a statement published on her website, Ward wrote, "As a doctor, I've counseled patients in similar situations and these end-of-life choices are never easy. I usually advise terminal patients to reduce stress, relax and spend time laughing with loved ones." I'm not issuing any sort of denouncement of Ward's skill as a physician, as I'm not in any way qualified to do so, but I will state that anyone with a glioblastoma -- or with anything even bordering the gravity of such a diagnosis -- would be well-advised to seek guidance from a medical practitioner with greater expertise than that typically possessed by a doctor of osteopathy who specializes in family practice and in osteopathic manipulative therapy.  Furthermore, it's highly presumptive at the point her pronouncement was made [possibly fewer than two days following McCain having been given the diagnosis himself] to have categorized his prognosis and related decision-making process as "end-of-life choices."  In subsequent comments given to Today's News-Herald, Ward conceded that she had not examined nor viewed medical records for Senator McCain, which was a rather blatant understatement. Neither did she backpedal from her dire predictions for the senator.

If the people of Arizona were to elect this person to a national legislative body, it would cause me to be most disheartened, though they have a right to elect whomever they feel most qualified to serve them. The suggestion of her appointment to a national legislative body is, however, another matter entirely. Governor Ducey, have mercy on the United States of America!  Please -- I implore you -- do not appoint this classless excuse for a human being to the United States Senate.

Leave Venus Alone!

Historically speaking, I have not been the world's staunchest supporter of tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams. They haven't always, in my opinion, conducted themselves with the utmost grace following on-court losses. They have sometimes suggested, either in regard to their own play or in defense of each other, that they can be beaten on court only if they defeat themselves.
This is, I feel, a failure to give due credit to an opponent. A classier course of action is to concede that one's opponent was the superior player on that given day. Far more often than not, both Williams sisters have done exactly that, but a failure to do so even once attracts a great deal of attention.

For the most part, though, Venus and Serena Williams have conducted their personal and professional lives, as do ***** the overwhelming majority of female athletes, in a manner that is above reproach. They occupy themselves productively, pay taxes, stay on the right side of the law, and share their wealth with worthy causes. In the grand scheme of things, the world would be a lovely place if everyone inhabiting it lived as the Williams sisters do.

Where Venus Williams' recent auto accident is concerned, I am bothered by how she has been treated. A car Venus was driving was struck by another car in an intersection not far from her home in Florida. The driver of the other car suffered multiple fractures. Worse yet, a seventy-eight-year-old passenger in the car sustained injuries that led to his death thirteen days later. An auto accident is probably not the way any of us wish to see our elderly relatives go. I'm especially sorry for the driver of the car, who must deal with her own injuries along with the grief associated with losing her husband.

On the other hand, sometimes accidents are merely accidents. Sometimes, even, those who suffer the greatest losses as the result of accidents are also the  ones who, when everything has been investigated, are shown to bear some or all of the responsibility for having caused the accidents. Palm Beach Gardens police initially, after interviewing witnesses, stated that Ms. Williams was at fault in the accident. Someone, acting on behalf of the estate of the deceased, almost immediately filed a lawsuit, seeking unspecified damages from Ms. Williams. Subsequently a tape of the accident showed that Ms. Williams entered the intersection legally on a green light, stopped when another car turned left in front of her, then, when the light turned red, attempted to proceed through the intersection when her car was slammed by another car entering the intersection. The Palm Beach Gardens police apparently learned from their earlier mistake of prematurely assigning fault in the accident, and this time declined to state specifically who was at fault. 

The officers presumably will soon complete their investigation. I won't  jump to any ridiculous conclusions in the meantime. Nonetheless, I have questions concerning how a collision of such magnitude occurred under the circumstances.
The driver of the car that struck Ms. Williams' car indicated that she was approaching the stoplight as it turned green and couldn't stop in time to avoid hitting Ms. Williams' car. From that, I would assume that she hadn't yet stopped at the light.  What if the light had not turned green at that precise instant? Would the driver then have run the light and hit whomever else happened to be in the intersection?

Police stated that Ms. Williams entered the intersection legally. A car turned left in front of her. She was driving sufficiently defensively that she was able to avoid hitting that car. Then the light turned red. She appeared to have proceeded with caution. The driver of the other car (and the spokesperson for whatever law firm represents the estate of the deceased) says that Ms. Williams should have stayed out of the other driver's lane -- that, by proceeding through the intersection, she failed to yield the right of way. How fast must the vehicle have been traveling if the driver could not stop though cars were in the intersection? Should Venus Williams  have remained in place in the intersection, blocking traffic? I assume that, had she seen another car approaching at a fast enough rate of speed to create a fatal accident on impact with her car, Ms. Williams would have remained motionless. Had she done that, however, she might just as easily have been broadsided by another elderly Florida driver plowing through the intersection.

What would you or I do if someone turned left in front of us in an intersection? Would we apply the brakes to avoid an avoidable collision, or would we go ahead and hit the car turning left so that we would then be clear of the intersection before a light turned red?  What do you or I typically do when a light turns green, theoretically allowing us to proceed, yet a car or two remain(s) in the intersection before us? Do we proceed because we have the supposed right of way, or do we first allow the cars to clear the intersection? It all seems quite ludicrous when the possibilities are considered.

My dad is here as I'm typing this. He says I'm throwing fuel on the fire by writing anything about this issue before the police have completed their investigation (except that it's probably OK because he acknowledges that hardly anyone reads this blog). It is not my intent to do that at all, though, with the information the police have given us, it's difficult to concoct a cogent scenario in which Ms. Williams would be at fault in this accident. It would be a classy move for the "estate" to announce that it is dropping the lawsuit against Ms. Williams. As it was, whoever was responsible for acting on behalf of the estate barely waited for rigor mortis to set in before filing the suit. Would such have been the case if someone as ordinary as I had been driving the other car, or is the hastiness with which the suit was filed in some way proportionate to the presumed depth of Ms. Williams' pockets? About that we will never know; we're each free to form our own conclusions.

***** Knotty or anyone else who knows, is it do or does here? Does the verb need to agree with "majority" or with "athletes"?

Chris Christie, Ugly American

My cousin who is a police detective says that people's eyes move upward when they are lying -- particularly when they're inventing their reality as they speak.

Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey, is someone I find rather disgusting. I never bought his lack of complicity in the Bridgegate  fiasco -- the situation in which lanes of traffic were closed on the George Washington Bridge in alleged retaliation for a local mayor's lack of support for Christie's gubernatorial bid.  He was able to escape any charges in the lane closure misdeed by placing the blame on assistants. Perhaps the assistants did pull of the bridge lane closure incident without Christie's knowledge or input. While I find it difficult to believe such to be the case, Christie is presumably capable of hiring assistants who are dishonest outlaws who would commit such an act.

Christie's most recent scandal of closing state beaches because an impasse between himself and democratic state legislators regarding a budget, then granting himself, along with family and friends, access to a state-owned beach adjacent to a state-owned beachside mansion reserved for the governor's use. This is wrong on so many levels that it's difficult to know where to start. it looked as though he was essentially flaunting his authority. Then his publicist lied about Christie's actions, trying to hide between what he or his publicist considered a technicality but what I maintain was not even technically true. The publicist, when called on either his or Christie's  lie, stated that Christie had not "caught any sun" because he worse a baseball cap during his time on the beach. That's not even technically true. Whatever the meaning of "caught any sun" might be construed to be, it has nothing to do with whether or not one's face was in the sun. Furthermore, parts of Christie's face were exposed to the sun.

Suggestions have been made by various pundits that Christie's debacle was an attempt to gain favor, and possibly a job, with President Trump once Trump fires another cabinet member or assistant 9Reince Priebus' job in particular has been cited as one on which Christie might possibly have in his radar. 

While I can  picture Trump being impressed by blatant flaunting of authority and bold-faced lying to the media, I hope such is not the case; I do not approve of Christie representing my nation in any official capacity or being compensated with my tax dollars. I could probably go along with Christie replacing Kellyanne Conway, as she is even more despicable than is Christie. Otherwise, he is the problem of the state of New Jersey, not of the United States of America.

They're Ba-aaaack: Reprise of Feverish Pitch and the Useless Dominican Infield

My brother and his bandmates look both weirder and less androgynous than do these people.

I'm sitting at a table in a club with, at last count, eleven friends. We're watching and listening to my brother's band. I thought we might have seen the last of Feverish Pitch and the Useless Dominican Infield, but I thought wrong. For the record, I told my brother way back in the day that his band's name was stupid and that he needed a more concise name, something like MouseRAt, though he couldn't use that exact name because it was already taken. He didn't listen to me. Years later, they're toiling away in obscurity. The band is calling this their final performance, but they called a performance two years ago the same thing, as well as one a year before that, and one eighteen months before that. Then there was their Farewell Tour eleven months earlier, which consisted of three separate performances. I'm beginning to believe we may never see the last of these people.

I've reached a conclusion that I had more or less believed before, but not to the degree I presently believe it, which is that Matthew does not belong on a stage with the other people in his band. He has legitimate musical talent. No one else in the group does. My cellist friend I know from several years of summer music festival who is here with me tonight agrees with me on this, and he's unbiased. It's not so much a matter of Matthew oozing talent from every pore as of the rest of the band having no talent whatsoever. Still, Matthew can at least sing as well as play guitar [masterfully] and even play keyboards proficiently on a few cover songs. (Cover songs are the only ones in the band's repertoire that are not atrocious. The band's original songs are hideous beyond imagination.) If 

Matthew were willing to live with at least one roommate for the rest of his life, to shop for food only at grocery outlet stores,  to clip coupons religiously, and maybe to learn to cut his own hair, he could conceivably make a living on his skill as a musician. I never thought I would say even that. 

Nonetheless, it's just as well that Matthew is preparing himself to hold down a substantial day job. He otherwise would probably have to collect cans and bottles for recycling in order to have a prayer of paying for health insurance  -- either that or to find a sugar mama, and those sorts of accessories come with all sorts of strings attached. We're all better off preparing to support ourselves. If we end up with significant others who are capable of supporting us or at least themselves, that's all the better, but it seems imprudent to count on it. I know people who don't have to work, but they managed to obtain educations and, because they had the capability of being self-supporting, did not have to settle for anything.  No one should leave himself or herself in a position of having to settle for anything.