I began writing an op-ed column in the New York Daily News in 2000 and am now syndicated by Creators.
Here are some of my favorite pieces, starting with an examination of one of life’s great mysteries: Why will people eat ANYTHING if you put it out at work?
OFFICE FOOD IS (UGH) IRRESISTIBLE
Because it’s there.
That’s the reason George Leigh Mallory climbed Mount Everest. And that’s the reason I just ate the congealed crab dip someone left on the “up for grabs” table at work.
Uh . . . excuse me a moment.
Okay! I’m back! My point is: People at work will eat pretty much anything. And I mean anything. Usually it’s leftover birthday cake or brown-tinged roast beef sandwiches from an earlier lunch conference. But the other day, it was a jar of okra spears.
Not just plain old popular okra, everybody’s favorite snack. This was pickled okra, green and glistening. No one knew who brought it — or why — but by the end of the day, every spear had disappeared, no doubt washed down with a cup of office coffee.
Yum.
Somehow, normal eaters — even picky eaters — become virtual garbage disposals at work, especially at this time of year. I myself have munched on Christmas cookies that must have spent most of the fall between a bag of garlic bagels and a pound of cat treats. But, hey — there they were, on top of the file cabinet that serves as Free Food Central. And out of a combination of boredom, procrastination and the strange thrill of getting something for nothing (even if that something is indigestion and chin fat), I dug in.
But first, I had to fight off the crowd.
“When you’re trapped inside at work, you just eat whatever’s there,” says my friend Sheila. “It’s a prisoner-of-war mentality. You’d probably eat shoe leather. What really gets me is when there’s a platter of stuff and you can see people eating the garnishes at the end. They just can’t accept that they didn’t get there in time for the free sandwiches.”
Speak for yourself, Sheila. That parsley hit the spot.
Somehow, the thrill of eating at work shuts off the normal disgust mechanism that functions at home. For instance, last summer Ben & Jerry’s sent our office so much ice cream we couldn’t finish it — at least, not in its solid form.
But hours after Chunky Monkey had turned into Liquid Lemur, folks were still stopping by with spoons. By the time it was Scummy Simian, they were pausing to pluck out chunks of toffee. No one blinked.
My friend Dan tells me that his travel agency once received a huge gift of guacamole but not enough chips. No problem. The agents simply whipped out their business cards and scooped away.
Of course, part of the problem lies not with the hungry hordes, but with the particular food that’s brought to the office. Food that should have been mulched.
“Oh yeah, Allen always brings in the yucky stuff we don’t eat at home,” confides my sister, Hannah. “Like, if someone baked us a cake and it’s awful and nobody wants it in the house anymore, he’ll bring it to work. A couple months after Halloween, he takes in all the candy the kids have rejected, too.”
Has he done that yet this year?
“Oh, no!” cries Hannah. “It’s waaaaaay too soon.” Why, some of the Hershey bars haven’t even turned white yet!
Worst of all is the office holiday party, which inevitably ends up looking like an alien autopsy. At one such gathering, my buddy Aaron ate a memorable bite of cheesecake. “It had shared the platter with some herring.”
No seconds for Aaron. And no more office food for me.
Unless that dip is still there.
WARNINGS SHOW AMTRAK’S GOT A LOOSE CABOOSE
EVER since that lady sued McDonald’s for millions because her coffee was (surprise) hot, companies seem more worried than ever about consumers coming after them.
To head off these pesky plaintiffs, high-paid lawyers are plastering warnings all over the place. You can’t say you weren’t warned when your coffee cup is emblazoned: “Caution! Contents may burn you to the bone!” A friend told me her son’s Batman cape actually came with the warning: “Does not confer ability to fly.” (Then why buy it?)
But perhaps the most overcautious of all is America’s railroad, Amtrak. The safety card you’ll find on board includes such helpful suggestions as: “Never exit a moving train.”
Aw gee, never? Not even when it looks so safe and fun?
Below we’ve mixed some real Amtrak safety tips with some we’ve made up. Can you tell the difference?
Can your lawyer?
1. Watch your hands, fingers and knees when lowering or raising seat trays.
2. Beware of fingers, thumbs and shirttails when lowering the toilet seat.
3. Arrive at the station early to avoid rushing to your train.
4. When walking down the stairs, place one foot in front of the other.
5. Do not leave children unattended.
6. Do not leave children on the tracks.
7. Wear shoes at all times, and be careful while wearing delicate or nonrubber-soled shoes.
8. Keep trousers firmly clasped about the waist to facilitate walking.
9. Use seatbacks and handrails for support while moving through the train.
10. Do not grasp passengers’ hair for support.
11. Watch your step when boarding and leaving the train.
12. Do not exit train when it is stopped on a bridge.
13. In case of emergency, leave luggage.
14. If fire erupts, do not remain in line in snack car.
15.In an emergency . . . move away from the train. Look out for other trains.
16. If a moving train is proceeding directly toward you, relocate to another track. Do not dawdle.
KEY: All the odd numbers are official Amtrak advice. The rest may be someday soon.
VISITING MOM, HER FOOD AND HER MEMORIES
We arrive at my mom’s the night before Passover. It’s a trip I’ve been dreading.
Dreading her questions: “What is today? Sunday? Thursday?” The confusion: “Is that lady coming again tomorrow? Is she supposed to be taking care of me?” The shock of clarity: “I think I’m having a breakdown.” And the lack thereof: “My neighbor asked me if I had a caregiver. Can you imagine? Me?” Yes, I’m dreading the whole package, but I forgot what was still inside it.
Mom herself. Grandma.
We get up to her apartment using our key – she can’t remember how to buzz people in – but then there she is, waiting in the hall, so glad to see us she’s grinning through tears. “Hello, hello! I may be going a little nuts, but welcome to Chicago!”
In we go and I’m flooded with relief. The caregiver we’ve hired must be part pixie. Gone are the papers hiding the table. Gone is the obstacle course of piles on the floor. Everything sparkles. And in the kitchen, even better: Food!
There’s a nice chicken in the fridge — God bless that caregiver — and fresh fruit. Milk, even. Milk that my mom used to buy by the gallon before our visits, but which gradually she’d grown to forget. Now with food and drink to offer, she sits my kids down and does just that: Would they like some supper? Some grapes?
It’s just like the old days. One son and my husband peel off, too tired to eat. But my 8-year-old sits at the table and chatters happily as Grandma asks him: How’s school? What grade is he in? What does he like best – oh, baseball? What’s the best thing about baseball?
“Running.”
I listen from the darkened dining room, unwilling to break the spell, and I think: Hey, I didn’t know my son liked running best. My mother is still teaching me things.
“How about some toast?”
I’ve never seen my son so hungry. They’re toasting some bread, and my mom is explaining: “Nowadays, toast pops up. But toasters used to have little metal doors on the side where you’d put the slice in. . . .”
Whoa! The days before the pop-up toaster are fresher to my mom than that slice of Wonder. More and more she talks about her childhood, her old boyfriends. Her high school yearbook sits on the table now, consulted more often than the phone book.
“And what do you like best about camp?”
They’re still talking. He’s still eating.
“I don’t know where all this food came from,” my mom says. My son shrugs: It doesn’t matter. He’ll take another cookie.
Will my mom remember this conversation? This perfect scene late at night as a little boy listens to stories of Sunbeam appliances and responds with his own about camp and cookies?
I don’t know. Or maybe I do. I guess what really matters now is that I’ll remember it and I hope so will my son.
He doesn’t dread these trips to Chicago because, unlike me, he remembers what’s waiting for him there. Not loss. Not dusk. Not a tangle of misfiring synapses. Just a lady who loves him more than the stars.
Grandma.
DISORDER DU JOUR ON EVERYONE’S MENU
Item: Nearly half of Americans suffer from some form of mental illness at some point during their lives, says a National Institute of Mental Health study. . . . Many of these problems are mild and temporary. – The Week, June 24
A few temporary mild mental illnesses observed in the course of a day:
Hairanoia: The suspicion that everybody is just saying they love your new haircut, but secretly laughing at it.
Kinsomnia: The inability to fall asleep once one starts thinking about one’s family.
Psyintology: To feel wildly conflicting emotions about Tom Cruise. On the one hand, he’s a control-freak cult-member nut job. On the other hand, my GOD is he gorgeous. All is forgiven, Tom! Or is it? No. Yes! No. Yes!
Seasonings Affective Disorder: Manifested by the need to “kick things up a notch” even if things taste just fine the way they are.
Hippocondria: The conviction that one’s hips look about a mile wide in the outfit one stupidly chose to wear today.
Post Traumatic Dress Disorder: Rage and guilt focused on a bride after she has ordered mauve pouf dresses for her bridesmaids and you are one of them.
Delusions of Grandes: Compulsive fantasizing about one’s next Starbucks, even while sipping a Frappucino right now.
Shleptomania: Going from store to store even though you don’t really know what you want and are maxed out on your credit cards anyway.
Obsessive-Complainer Disorder: Manifests itself in sing-song statements of fatigue, boredom and the wish to do, eat or be something else. Also see: Whines, whining, whiners, children.
ATMnesia: The inability to remember where you put your bank card moments after you have completed a cash machine transaction.
Bi-stroller Disorder: To experience violent fantasies while being stuck behind someone with a double stroller hogging the whole sidewalk, especially if that someone is on her cell phone.
Clinical Cynical Syndrome: To reply to any idea proposed by a thoughtful adult with, “Yeah, right,” or, “Okay, okay already!” Technically known as “adolescence.”
Mallucination: Often triggered by Cinnabon inhalation. Mallucinators see Baby Gaps and Yankee Candle Companies while staring into space.
Duhlirium: The inability to stop responding with the word, “Duh,” when someone is trying to explain something.
Dementionate: Compulsively nice behavior — the lending of money, sharing of fries, remembering of birthdays — sparking waves of unworthiness on the part of the recipient.
Passive-Agassive: The compulsion to make rude noises. (See: “Boys.”)
Festive-Aggressive: To insist on wearing a party dress, even to the sandbox. (See: “Girls.”)
Iraqnaphobia: The inability to turn on the TV or radio for fear of becoming seriously depressed.
Iranaphobia: As yet undiagnosed. Stay tuned.
GIRL SCOUTS BRING OUT THE COOKIE MONSTER IN ALL OF US
Either girl scouts are getting older and hairier or a whole lot of moms and dads are horning in on this hallowed American tradition.
Sure, plenty of the girls in green are still ringing doorbells, pigtails flying, eagerly foisting Trefoils upon us without ever being able to explain exactly what a Trefoil is. (Then again, what’s a Samoa? Those always sounded like South American dictators.)
But the way I get my Girl Scout cookies is probably the way you get yours: Through a somewhat less cute, less pigtailed parent.
They catch you at the office just about 3 p.m. when the idea of a cookie combined with the appeal of helping some kid go on a campout hits you like a granny with a pocketbook. Before you know it, you have ordered more Peanut Butter Sandwiches than you could possibly screw open and lick by yourself, even though that’s exactly what you intend to do.
Then along comes another parent with another plea. And another. And another. The scouts sell 49 million boxes of cookies a year, most (it seems) to you. Which explains the growing pile of boxes in your cubicle.
Since we are in the throes of cookie delivery season right now, you’ve probably noticed your office cockroaches gaily preparing for their annual Feast of the Scout. What a festive time of year this is! Festooned in tiny green sashes and knee socks, they dance atop your desk till dawn, singing songs of Julia Ward Howe, high on giant crumbs of shortbread.
By day, meanwhile, your hungry co-workers start dropping by and wondering, friendly-like, “What’s that you’ve got there under your desk?”
Proudly you reply, “The fruits of my support for the Girl Scout Council, helping gals ages 5-17 enhance their math, science, computer and literacy skills; learn about health, fitness and personal safety; strengthen their self-esteem, protect the environment and understand the evils of substance abuse.” Pause. “If you’ve got the milk, I’ve got the cookies.”
Now, the Girl Scout Council would like its young ladies to sell for themselves the old-fashioned way. They claim this teaches kids valuable lessons about business, and that was certainly true for me.
When I was a scout I went door to door peddling cookies with two of my buddies. Only hitch was while I was busy collecting the order forms, they were busy collecting the cash. Cash I never saw again. Exactly what valuable lesson did I learn here?
Don’t go into business with friends! That advice alone has probably saved me a bundle in adulthood, so chalk up another one to the scouts.
The experience, however, may explain why I have nothing against parents taking over the cookie sales. Fact is, Girl Scout cookies make everyone happy whether at work or home, so who cares who sells where?
Yes, here at the office we may miss the little pixies appealing to our noblest instincts. (“Don’t those cookies look gooooooooood?) But what we lose in charm we make up for in Thin Mints we don’t have to share with anyone we live with.
Sign me up!
SEX WINS, BARELY
WHOA! The results of the latest work-and-sex survey should come as a big shock to . . . hmmm, well, somebody.
Somewhere.
Maybe.
Somebody who never held a job. Or if he or she did, it was in a private spa in Hawaii and the job was rating massages.
The rest of us working stiffs, however, cannot find it too surprising to learn that a survey of 500 Americans discovered that satisfaction on the job is not as satisfying as satisfaction in the sack.
In other words: Better nooky beats better worky by 4 percentage points.
Oh, where would we be without professional polling? Still assuming that undented canned goods were at the top of most people’s personal satisfaction pyramids, I guess.
Instead, we now know that a good family life rates No. 1, financial security is No. 2, religion 3, sex 4 and there, at the very bottom, is our work life.
It certainly is.
Most unsatisfied of all must be those workers stuck phoning people to ask if they prefer mind-blowing sex or unlimited free paperclips.
The results of this stunning survey were unveiled about a week ago at a conference proudly held in our nation’s capital. And we wonder why Iraq isn’t more psyched to become the next U.S.A.
“We did the poll simply to highlight the fact that, as we suspected, people are interested in sex and that a healthy sex life is important,” says Dr. Marianne Legato, professor of medicine at Columbia.
And maybe next time Columbia will poll 500 people to see if they prefer eating lunch or getting poked in the eye with a carrot. We suspect such a study would highlight the fact that while people are interested in eating, blood spurting from the eye is a negative value, not actively pursued by most participants.
But back to sex.
Perhaps the strangest thing about this survey is that Americans actually put it No. 4 on a list of 5. Meaning that, despite all the songs, shows, shops and, yes, newspaper columns devoted to it, sex is lagging behind something as G-rated as happiness at home.
Does this mean that seeing junior in his first karate costume beats Scarlett Johansson in a leopard bikini?
Yup. And it even beats a good toner day at the Xerox machine.
DISORDER DU JOUR ON EVERYONE’S MENU
Item: Nearly half of Americans suffer from some form of mental illness at some point during their lives, says a National Institute of Mental Health study. . . . Many of these problems are mild and temporary. – The Week, June 24
A few temporary mild mental illnesses observed in the course of a day:
Hairanoia: The suspicion that everybody is just saying they love your new haircut, but secretly laughing at it.
Kinsomnia: The inability to fall asleep once one starts thinking about one’s family.
Psyintology: To feel wildly conflicting emotions about Tom Cruise. On the one hand, he’s a control-freak cult-member nut job. On the other hand, my GOD is he gorgeous. All is forgiven, Tom! Or is it? No. Yes! No. Yes!
Seasonings Affective Disorder: Manifested by the need to “kick things up a notch” even if things taste just fine the way they are.
Hippocondria: The conviction that one’s hips look about a mile wide in the outfit one stupidly chose to wear today.
Post Traumatic Dress Disorder: Rage and guilt focused on a bride after she has ordered mauve pouf dresses for her bridesmaids and you are one of them.
Delusions of Grandes: Compulsive fantasizing about one’s next Starbucks, even while sipping a Frappucino right now.
Shleptomania: Going from store to store even though you don’t really know what you want and are maxed out on your credit cards anyway.
Obsessive-Complainer Disorder: Manifests itself in sing-song statements of fatigue, boredom and the wish to do, eat or be something else. Also see: Whines, whining, whiners, children.
ATMnesia: The inability to remember where you put your bank card moments after you have completed a cash machine transaction.
Bi-stroller Disorder: To experience violent fantasies while being stuck behind someone with a double stroller hogging the whole sidewalk, especially if that someone is on her cell phone.
Clinical Cynical Syndrome: To reply to any idea proposed by a thoughtful adult with, “Yeah, right,” or, “Okay, okay already!” Technically known as “adolescence.”
Mallucination: Often triggered by Cinnabon inhalation. Mallucinators see Baby Gaps and Yankee Candle Companies while staring into space.
Duhlirium: The inability to stop responding with the word, “Duh,” when someone is trying to explain something.
Dementionate: Compulsively nice behavior – the lending of money, sharing of fries, remembering of birthdays – sparking waves of unworthiness on the part of the recipient.
Pirromania: Obsessive desire to see Jeanine Pirro run for office. Any office.
Passive-Agassive: The compulsion to make rude noises. (See: “Boys.”)
Festive-Aggressive: To insist on wearing a party dress, even to the sandbox. (See: “Girls.”)
Iraqnaphobia: The inability to turn on the TV or radio for fear of becoming seriously depressed.
Iranaphobia: As yet undiagnosed. Stay tuned.
Lskenazy@yahoo.com
RESOLUTIONS SURE TO PUSH YOUR BUTTONS
At last! New Year’s resolutions for the people who need ‘em most:
THE ELECTRONIC-DEVICE DESIGNER’S SOLEMN PLEDGE:
From this point forth, I, a dyed-in-the-silicon techie who intuitively understands all gadgets, will accept the fact that what seems “obvious” to me is “*#&%*# impossible!” to everyone else. I will therefore keep someone like my doddering great-aunt in mind whenever I design household objects, such as an electric toothbrush. (Even though great-auntie doesn’t have any teeth. I know that’s not the point.)
So, anyway:
I hereby pledge that every function on every gadget will have its own button. For instance, an alarm clock will have one button for setting the alarm and a completely separate button for setting the time. Even if it seems painfully obvious to me that you just tap the button once for time and twice for alarm — four times if you want to reset it for p.m. during daylight-saving time — and that’s that. But, no, I will give you all sorts of little buttons for your little minds.
*Promise: When I affix an on-off switch, it will be clearly labeled “on-off” and not “standby.”
*Similarly, a play button shall state the word “play,” and not be just a circle, an arrow, or an arrow in a circle.
*Furthermore, these words — “play,” “off” and “on” — shall be displayed in a color that contrasts with the object itself. On no account will they be written in raised black plastic on a black plastic surface.
*And speaking of no-nos, when I design a remote control, it will not have three buttons along the top that say, “TV,” “VCR” and “TV/VCR,” because that, admittedly, is infuriating.
*Nor will it have weird buttons that say things like “zero back” and “tamperproof” which, on a slow day in ‘97, we added just to confuse you.
*When designing cordless phones, I will confer with my fellow designers to decide once and for all whether the phone will answer automatically when you pick it up or you first have to press “talk.”We will also universally agree that, from now on, “talk” shall not also mean “hang up.”
*And when we get around to designing a new generation of cell phones . . . forget it. We’ll never agree on cell phones. But I personally pledge never to make the on button red again, as I did for a while in ‘02 – even though that provided a lot of laughs.
*As for other appliances: I will design no more microwaves with different levels of heating. I am keenly aware that everyone wants to nuke on high, just like everyone wants Tylenol that is Extra Strength.
*I will make all radios with knobs.
*I will add absolutely no new functions to the digital camera. In fact, I’ll take a couple off, like pixel choice.
*With everything I design, I will include the appropriate batteries.
But I can’t promise to tell you where they go.
Lskenazy@yahoo.com
HE’S WRESTLING WITH A CITY OF CYNICS
Why is it that the people who have it hardest always say, “I’m blessed”?
That’s what Billy Williams was saying the other night after a sweaty day of challenging strangers to jump higher than him, run faster, or at least climb onto his 50-year-old, once-run-over-by-an-18-wheeler back, and stand on him while he did 10 pushups in the broiling heat. And all he asked for in return was a donation.
Despite the huge hand-painted signs announcing this deal and the huge crowds ogling his act outside Penn Station and later in Union Square, very few were the folks who took Williams’ challenge, and even fewer were the donations. Many, many, however, were the cynics snorting, “How do we know you’re 50?” “How do we know you were hit by a truck?” “You say you were partly paralyzed, but where’s the proof?”
As if lying about these facts would make a man unjustly rich and famous. As if it’s not impressive enough that, instead of begging, Williams has people standing on his back for a living.
Here, in any event, are the facts: Williams is homeless, receiving disability, living in a Project Renewal shelter – and pretty darn happy for all that.
“I don’t care how much money you got,” says the strongman. “If you ain’t got a strong body you got nothing.”
What Williams has, besides strength, is a story to tell: Over a decade ago, in San Diego, Williams was working as a sign painter. Come Christmas, he hired a homeless man to help him. As payment, “I gave him money to go get a new sleeping bag.”
Two days later the man was murdered. For his sleeping bag.
“That hurt real bad,” says Williams. So bad, that he believes God told him to walk across America to bring attention to the plight of the homeless.
Whether or not this made any sense, walk Williams did. But as he reached Odessa, Tex., he got hit by a truck. It was a long time before he woke from his coma and longer still before he could move his left side. He carries a computer printout describing this injury, but despite the medical jargon, onlookers accuse him of typing it up himself. He carries a string of scars on his torso that onlookers pooh-pooh, too.
To me, they all seemed authentic. But just to make sure, I called up the Odessa American newspaper to see whether they had any record of a William Dean Williams getting hit by a truck there in 1993.
Editor Ken Brodnax called back an hour later holding an accident file labeled, “William Dean Williams.” The date? 1993. “It absolutely did happen,” Brodnax says.
But, of course, trusting a homeless man’s story is tantamount to suckerdom in this town.
“I don’t believe he was paralyzed,” sneered an onlooker at Union Square. “I’m a med student. I know better than that.”
Wow, such compassion.
“I’m not that impressed,” said a slacker with a pierced lip.
Yeah, it’s so easy to get up every day, face a crowd that doesn’t believe a word you say and try to wow ‘em with an act they’d pay to see in a circus. Me, I’d give up.
Not Williams. “People laugh at me,” he shrugs. But he still believes God is on his side. Maybe someone will hire him as a personal trainer, or a sign painter. Maybe someone will stand on his back and give him $5. That would be great, too.
But mostly, people will keep watching his act and telling themselves how smart they are not to be taken in.
Given the choice between being filled with smug contempt or sorely-tried faith, I’d say that, indeed, Williams is blessed.
IT’S UP TO Y’ALL, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
So the Country Music Awards are coming to New York City?
Yoo-Hoo!
I mean – yee haw!
To get right ready, may I propose some New York country tunes?
I Went and Bought a Fun Pass (So Why Didn’t I Have Fun?)
My Beer’s in the Bar and My Butt’s on the Sidewalk (The Smoking Ordinance Song)
(Leaving ‘Cause) You’re a Lotta Woman and I’m a Latte Guy
Make Like a Cabbie and Pick Up Your Phone
All My Exes Wear Rolexes
Don’t Even THINK of Sleeping Here
She Took the Ferry Because I Love Queens
MoMA, Don’t Make Your Patrons Pay Up Twenty Dollars
(Gettin’ Tired of My) Brooklyn Lager Blogger
I’m All Shook Up and So Is My Street (The Con Edison Song)
I Gave Her My Saks Card (Now I Need a Fifth)
Who’s Gonna Share Your Pastrami (Now That My Cardiologist Says I Can’t?)
(Wish I’d Never) Met Mr. Mets
You Win Some, You Dim Sum
My Heart Fell in a Pothole the Day I Met You
Callin’ 311 (To See Who Fixes Hearts)
My Pass is EZ But My Passenger Ain’t
Don’t Burst My Bubble (I Paid $850,000 for this Pre-war Studio)
I’ll Be Frank: You’re a Weiner
Set Your Phone to Vibrate (I’m Not Coming Home Tonight)
I Held the Elevator, She Gave Me the Shaft
If I Can Make It Here, Why Can’t I Make You?
See You on the Second Ave. Subway (In Other Words: Goodbye)
(Feels Like) You’re the Pigeon and I’m the Car
You’re as Cheap as Chinese Takeout, But I’m Hungry for You Again
I Feel Your Champagne (The Bloomberg Song)
My Dog Ran off with My Best Friend, and I’m Left Holding the Bag
I Bought a Monthly Pass, But You’re a One-Day Ride
Speed Dial My Lawyer, I Think I’m in Love
The Co-op Board Accepted Me (So Why Won’t You?)
Holding Nights Ahead (The Subway Love Song)
Talking Loud, Ain’t Sayin’ Nothing (The Subway Announcement Song)
Love Me Slow As the M34
I Was Sweet on the Doughnut Man (Till He Raised His Prices 30 cents)
Saw a Rat in the Subway (But It Wasn’t You)
Pardon Me, Miss (You’re Stepping on My Heart)
Harold, You’re Square
This Meat Is Taken
Gotta Separate My Trash (So I’m Leaving You on the Curb)
CHEMO, NOT KARMA, BEATS CANCER
Lance Armstrong is an inspiration to anyone who has had to face cancer. Unfortunately, he’s also the standard-bearer for a corrosive myth: Stay positive and you can beat that killer.
Not that Armstrong is saying that, precisely. But it’s there between the lines. In his commercial for Bristol-Myers Squibb, he faces the camera and jeers, “Remember me, cancer? You gave me less than a 50/50 chance to live. You made me suffer. My mom, too. But you made me smarter and more determined and a believer in miracles.”
It’s that juxtaposition of “determination” and “miracles” that’s so disturbing. One does not lead to the other. But too many cancer patients and their loved ones are burdened by the belief they do. So if they want a miracle (and who doesn’t?), they think the patient has to be determination personified. Like Lance.
“I’ve had many patients come in and say, ‘I know I’m supposed to have a positive attitude,’ and one of the first things I say is, ‘Who said?’ ” says UCLA cancer psychologist Anne Coscarelli. “If we mandate that a positive attitude is what all patients need all the time, we’re telling them they can’t have an absolutely normal reaction to the experience.”
Yes, studies done over the years have shown that a positive attitude can indeed lead to a better quality of life – and that’s hugely important. It’s even something to strive for. “But if there are no effective treatments, then your length of life is not going to be prolonged just because you feel you’re going to beat it,” says Dr. Avi Barbasch of the American Cancer Society.
That’s reality. And yet, since the dawn of the New Age, a belief in the miraculous powers of good cheer has mushroomed. Just look at the Web! “Feel negative=attract negative. Think/feel positive=attract positive,” goes a typical positive thinking blog.
The implications are insulting. If a patient with a good outlook can lick cancer, then who’s dying?
As painful as it is, plenty of valiant fighters and fiercely loved folks with everything to live for haven’t made it. Let no one question their lack of will.
It’s hard enough having cancer. Having to face it steely as a seven-time Tour de France winner is asking too much.
