Tet(anus) Offensive

As my daughter grows older and passes each developmental milestone (“inch-stone” would be more fitting, as I suggested a couple posts ago), the occasional visit to the pediatrician’s office comes with the territory. I’ve had the mind-bending misfortune of accompanying her and Jenny on two occasions now; let me explain why it’s such a supremely bizarre place.

At the pediatrician, reality is inverted. All the standard rules of the medical profession are turned on their head. Decorating devices that would otherwise seem out of place in the hyper-formal world of medicine are employed with the greatest deliberation: stripes, polka-dots, and primary colors, for example, are all unusually prominent; wayfinding fixtures (e.g. signs, door numbers, room names) are bright, bubbly, and cartoonish. Around every corner is another dreamlike setting that could've been spawned out of Lewis Carroll’s hallucinatory visions.

On our first visit, I asked how I could find the bathroom, to which the nurse provided a tentative, open-ended response, “Well, we have a big bathroom and a little bathroom – which do you want?” I was instantly confounded by many aspects of that question, so I’m afraid I interrupted her with my preferences before she finished responding; I really didn’t need more details - all I could think about was ducking dramatically through the little bathroom’s doorway, crouching to my knees as I pinched my fingertips together to turn the microscopic faucet handles. And I’m sure little fairies would’ve been there to dry my hands with the sparkling breeze from their fluttering wings.

To up the ante during our next visit, we were jettisoned from the waiting room to a new room, its walls festooned with Star Wars posters and shadow boxes full of alien figurines. Plastic model spaceships and more aliens hung from every square inch of the ceiling. (Maybe I’m an outlier here, but the persistent anxiety associated with medical appointments was scarcely eased by alien creatures and their extra-terrestrial deformities. Instead, the worst medical side effects imaginable took turns clawing their way through my head). I can’t speak for Josephine, but if I went to my doctor and found a seemingly unhealthy fascination with sci-fi space mythology, I would be more than a little concerned about his/her commitment to the Hippocratic oath.

The terminology is way out there too. It’s safe to say there’s a lot more coo-ing than would be typical for my own doctor visits. When infant Josephine goes to the doctor, however, there are entire conversations held between physician and patient with rare utterance of any sensible English vocabulary, each party making the most frugal use of consonants. There are lots of official references to “prickles” and “toesies”, “toofers” and “bumbles”, and all manner of gobbledy gook, with hardly a trace of scientific terms. I’m still not quite sure what the pediatrician meant when she referred to Josephine’s “snorkies,” but in one of the few oddities that I actually appreciated, Josephine’s doctor simply referred to her shots collectively as “the meanness”. Her sweet Southern accent gave it a dainty gloss that I assure you is only attainable when one’s vocal chords are cured in a steady marinade of iced tea and pimiento cheese.

The vaccination portion of each visit is particularly troubling for me. In general, I wouldn’t say I’m an avid fan of sharp metal objects piercing flesh, but the gory pain of the stab is just the beginning. Now I’ve found another reason to loathe shots -- just take a look at a few of the dubious ingredients that go into concocting a common vaccine in the lab (according to the Dr. Robert Sears Vaccine Book):

Chick embryo proteins

Fetal cow blood serum

Monkey kidney cells

Monkey guts? The blood of an unborn calf? Throw in a frog’s heart and some cat eyeballs and you have yourself a bona fide witches brew. All those years of education, internships, and residencies, yet the average M.D. hasn't evolved much past the same elemental resources used in the lore and mysticism of several centuries ago. Granted, they're mixing their prescriptions at a more granular level now -- and without the bubbling cauldron. Ohh, and there is the minor point that the newer way does seem to work, whereas witches have a less honorable track record.

Pediatric sorcery and witchcraft aside, there are more ethical concerns at hand: I’m horribly disappointed that Austin, one of the bastions of progressive citizenry in our fair nation-state, has yet to enlist a doctor who will perform vegan vaccinations (you know, something without all these cruel, carnivorous inputs). Can’t some pharma chemist somewhere figure out a soy-based shot for measles, mumps, and rubella? If veganism has taught us nothing else, it's that there's no limit to the wonders you can squeeze out of a humble soybean as long as you’re willing to process it enough.

Only the Occasional Whiff of Patchouli

A couple days ago, Josephine turned six months. We did nothing to celebrate because the last quarter has not been the most harmonious season between Josephine and her parents. But because we control the purse strings, Jenny and I did recently treat ourselves to a fairly ambitious vacation to Northern California, albeit with l’enfant terrible in tow. It has been about a year since we’ve had a true getaway, but when we planned the trip a few months ago, we mistakenly assumed that a child who is more or less serene at three months old would maintain a similar disposition over the course of the subsequent three months. Ha! [I'm laughing with tears in my eyes.]

Chalk it up to another hazard of naivete for first-time parents. Here are other things I learned in Northern California, some thankfully unrelated to parenthood:

• There are more Priuses than people in Berkeley.


• Berkeley has gone commercial, and its archetypical acolytes have fled to surrounding communities like Sebastopol, where stores selling locally handmade glassware and pottery are exceedingly common, often advertising their wares as so-called “functional art.” My best guess is that, in this case, "functional" means “can be smoked out of.”


• In the wine country, the natives feel there’s no limit to the ways in which oak wine barrels can be repurposed with apishly stylistic effect; it’s the landscaping equivalent of that particular Napa/Sonoma font that proprietors feel they can put on signs to provide their establishment with instant cachet.


• Of all the temptations we passed up in the wine country, from high vintage tasting rooms to the French Laundry and other fine eateries of national repute, none seemed more irresistibly alluring than the occasional daycare on the side of the road.


• One shouldn't be surprised when you spend the night in a mountain town crammed in the middle of several national forests, only to find out that all the rooms are booked up by hundreds of people from the park service, all of whom are in town to eradicate the surrounding forest of marijuana.


• “Where time stands still” is not a promising motto for your lodging for the night


• As it turns out, there’s little you can do to reason with a six month old


• For civil engineers in California, any indication that lanes are merging is an afterthought. (The arrows are usually painted on the pavement after you pass through the stop light, roughly 15 ft before the lane disappears.)


• Beach towns have beach trash and river towns have river trash, all washed up from the Summer of Love (or at least the ever-elusive dream of its renaissance).


• Many hardened hippies are ultimately irritable and difficult.


• Shirts are no longer in vogue for men in offbeat towns of Sonoma County. Guerneville, with its above average ruffians per capita, can be particularly harrowing after dark.


• I was astonished to find that Northern California is still the sort of place where people drive down main street with country music blaring out their rolled-down windows. You don't have to go to far out of the Bay Area to be in the backwoods.


• On the other hand, rural gas stations there stock bottles of organic apple juice sourced from local orchards, and by "local," I mean the orchards that are located within that same county.


• Coffeeshops in otherwise unassuming small towns carry books like the one I noticed titled “10 Minute Activist”


• Sometimes churches have to be converted into natural foods stores.

"The Referendum," by Tim Kreider

I read an amusing article a couple weeks ago. Here's an excerpt:

“Most of my married friends now have children, the rewards of which appear to be exclusively intangible and, like the mysteries of some gnostic sect, incommunicable to outsiders. In fact it seems from the outside as if these people have joined a dubious cult: they claim to be much happier and more fulfilled than ever before, even though they live in conditions of appalling filth and degradation, deprived of the most basic freedoms and dignity, and owe unquestioning obedience to a capricious and demented master.

"I have never even idly thought for a single passing second that it might make my life nicer to have a small, rude, incontinent person follow me around screaming and making me buy them stuff for the rest of my life. [Note to friends with children: I am referring to other people’s children, not to yours.] But there are also moments when some part of me wonders whether I am not only missing the biological boat but something I cannot even begin to imagine — an entire dimension of human experience undetectable to my senses, like a flatlander scoffing at the theoretical concept of sky.

"But I can only imagine the paralytic terror that must seize my friends with families as they lie awake calculating mortgage payments and college funds and realize that they are locked into their present lives for farther into the future than the mind’s eye can see. Judging from the unanimity with which parents preface any gripe about children with the disclaimer, “Although I would never wish I hadn’t had them and I can’t imagine life without them,” I can’t help but wonder whether they don’t have to repress precisely these thoughts on a daily basis."