Live and Learn

What’s Ok to say and what isn’t: only you can o decide. I love the informality and immediacy of the internet, all those people out there saying just how they feel. It’s like the opening scene from “City of Angels” where Nicholas Cage and Andre Braugher stand on a tall building listening to the thoughts of the little humans below. (They’re angels, see. Then one of them falls in love with Meg Ryan before she had her upper lip plumped up this scary way.)Take a crack like that: it’s everyday parlance here on the net where people are always exclaiming over Before and After shots of the poor celebrities. I'd totally take a shot like that here, but I wouldn't dream of doing it in the weekly column I write - partly because I consider it a privilege to appear in the paper every week and partly because such remarks seem too... well, hurtful. I also don’t use the word 'fat’ in my column or  refer to the 'Christmas cards' we 'all' write or speak about when you go 'upstairs' in your house.  I’m done leaving people out by acting like everyone is thin, and Christian, and has a whole house instead of an apartment or a rented room. I’m just very careful – in the paper.But here? I act like it’s all harmless jauntiness. Or I did until yesterday when I got an email reacting to the photo I had just posted of a person with psoriasis. Look back and see. I was saying basically “Awesome medical anomalies!” “Awesome video of a surgeon’s implements probing around like the delicate feelers of an insect!”  But the man who emailed me opened my eyes:“Dear Terry,”  he began…

Thanks for sharing with your readers a 'great'  picture of psoriasis.  Unfortunately, a real person was in that photo, and for that person, psoriasis is anything but great.  More than a quarter of a million people in Illinois, including many children, have psoriasis or its counterpart, psoriatic arthritis.  All of us with psoriasis need more medical research, affordable treatments, and greater understanding in the meantime.  If interested, you can learn more at our website below.Thanks again for your coverage of this incurable immune system disease.Michael Paranzino, Psoriasis Cure Now, P.O. Box 2544Kensington, MD 20891 Kensington Maryland  http://www.psoriasis-cure-now.org

My cheeks burn to read such a mild response to my unfeeling remarks. Guess now is as good a time as any for me to mosey over to this psoriasis site and start getting schooled. It's so true: we live and then (one hopes) we learn.

People Are Stupid (Part 99)

What’s the most insensitive thing you’ve heard anyone say? In my column this week I look at how thick people can sometimes be: the perfect stranger who tries to shame a new mom for calling early motherhood hard; the ditzy 20-something who tries to equate what was probably her own mere hangover with the real and dramatic struggles of a man who even when standing still can’t help pitching and tilting about like a sailor in a storm.I hope I didn’t come off sounding superior for noticing. I mean I realize: people just get nervous and say things. Once my brother-in-law rode down in an elevator with F. Lee Bailey, the most famous lawyer  in the country at the time. He looked at old F. Lee and looked away; looked and looked away, then blurted “Excuse me: Are you who I think I am?”And that’s nothing compared to what people will say at a wake. Three of the people I lived with died within 15 months when I was a kid so I know. They laugh, tell jokes, even dead-people jokes, believe it or not. They lean in and whisper gossip ... and all this without benefit of alcohol which you don’t see served so much at wakes these days but which I can tell you will certainly be served at my wake, to be held in my living room, it’s all arranged.There’ll be drink, food, major sitting around, bring the kiddies we’ll all have fun. Now go up top and read this week’s column. :-)