Odd Exchange

I saw an odd interaction on Wednesday. I can’t quite shake it from my mind. It probably means nothing, but.. well, you decide for yourself.

I am sitting with my baby in a circle of other mothers with their babies. We are in the children’s section of the local library. Babies are cooing, the ones that are mobile are.. well, mobiling. Nibbling dirty goodies from the floor and gurgling at each other, chubby fingers reaching out to explore each other’s eyeballs. At the head of the circle is a woman who works at the library, with a notepad in hand.

‘Right,’ she says, ‘Welcome back mothers, and babies. Before we start this week’s singalong I’d like to go round the group and get all your names and your babies’ names.’

So round the group we go.

I’m Cindy and this is little Aiyla. 

I’m Anna and this is Kyle.

I’m Sarah and this is Amy.

I’m Lilly and this is Darcy.

And so on.

Until we come to an older lady holding a chubby little cherub with a bow on her head. The cherub, not the lady.

‘Hi,’ the lady says, ‘I’m Steph and this is my granddaughter Sofia.’

‘Oh!’ the library worker exclaims, ‘Stephanie! You probably don’t recognise me out of context.’

Steph squints at her, smiles politely, cocks her head.

‘We used to live on the same street in Goodbridge. A good many years ago.’

‘Oh!’ Steph says, laughing awkwardly, ‘Yes!’. Her lips lied to her eyes.

Yet she still squints at the library woman and cocks her head, almost unintentionally.

‘Yeah we used to have a good natter back then. Hahah. Right, who’s next?’

Steph relaxes visibly, sinking into her seat. She doesn’t look like she recognised the library woman.

Then the strange thing happens. A couple of new ladies walk in as we’re doing the introductions. We widen the circle and they seat themselves somewhere before Steph.. so that the library woman has to go back to them and get them to introduce themselves.

Then it’s Steph’s turn again, seemingly, because the circle is quiet and the library woman is looking at Steph, pen poised, ‘And you are?’ she says, pointedly, as though Steph is being slow.

Huh?!

Steph looks surprised, she stutters, ‘uh, yes I’m Steph and this is my granddaughter Sofia..’ and her voice fades away.

I thought it was all so baffling. How did the library woman recognise Steph from long ago in the first instance and then forget she ever knew her, and then proceed to also forget that she had already introduced herself?

What do YOU think?

Excuse me, fellow human.

Can I tell you something?

It’s a little secret. Mostly it is a plaguing nightmare.

Are you listening?

Do you care? If not, it’s okay. I am going to say it anyway.

I have no friends.

Yes, you heard right.

It doesn’t make me a sad human. It just makes me feel sad sometimes.

I don’t know how this happened. Once upon a time I was surrounded by friends. We had some great larks. Then physical distance came between us as we all spread over the globe to pursue our own lives and careers.

Acquaintances came and went in my new life.

I’ve been here six years.

Six years and all I made were mistakes and regrets.

So now I am twenty one and a small voice inside my head says,

“But Lenora, you have no friends.”

I do have ‘friends’, if you can call people who you hang out with from time to time that. But I can’t trust these people. I can’t tell them that my heart is ailing and that I fear sometimes for my marriage. I can’t tell them that I feel like I am a failure at 21 because I haven’t achieved the goals I set out to achieve by now. I can be there for them emotionally and listen to them and cheer them up but I can’t cry to them and have their comforting friendly arms and laughs to bring me up again.

I go to their dorms, we have pizza and watch movies, we go shopping together; but I don’t feel like I can fully open to them. Not like before. I can’t have meaningful conversations with them about things that matter because they don’t seem to understand those things. Maybe adult friendships are different? Psssh. No. I know they’re not. A true friend is a true friend, no matter your age.

There.

That’s my secret.

That’s probably an unsocial thought, and one which I am loathe to let go of. But there we go.

What are your thoughts on friendship? Do you think friendships change as you enter adulthood?

Meeting in a Cafe

John Singer Sargent (1880)

Today I met a woman in the library cafe.

She came up to me and asked if she could sit at my table, as the library cafe was bustling with people.

I said, of course!

I noticed she looked Arabian so asked if she was Arab.

She was!

We got to talking in Arabic. She was a very intelligent woman. I would put her in her mid-thirties. Very pretty. What struck me the most about her was her thought process. Her thoughts seemed to run a mile a minute. She was explaining something about having a phD and it not really being much of anything unless one chooses to use it for good interaction. I felt as though I was focusing on the fact that she was saying something, rather than what she was actually saying! This made me feel perturbed, because zoning out while someone is telling you something you are dying to hear is not normal, is it? my father is guilty of this habit.

After she left, I thought in horror: I am my father!

Not that my father is a bad person to be. In fact I would be quite chuffed if someone said I took after him. He is a very intellectual man, with oceans of knowledge. It’s just this habit that he has of not really knowing what people are saying to him from time to time. He zones out when people are taking to him. My mum reckons his head is in the clouds. It’s not a bad trait to have. But it does mean you miss out on what many people have to say.

Like me, today.

I think she said that having a qualification means nothing if you can’t apply it in social interactions. Like, for example, it’s well enough for a doctor in medicine to have all the qualifications necessary for practise, but if said doctor doesn’t possess the social skills to be able to interact effectively with patients then there really is no point in that doctor being a doctor at all. I think that was what she was saying. I wish I’d managed to focus on what she was saying.

I just nodded dumbly and agreed with her, rather than contributed to the discussion, so it just trailed off, and I think she probably thought I was an idiot. Or that I was rude for not really saying anything properly back.

She paid me a lovely compliment, though. She said my Arabic was excellent.

Why thank you, kind lady.

On Bits and Bobs

The cold has settled in folks and the guy who replaced my windscreen today said he was “getting too old for this job’ whilst gripping a hot cup of tea and stomping his feet.

Teeth were chattering, mist was rising, people were just mounds of clothing and puffs of snowy white breath and grey clouds hung low in the sky, spitting out rain every few hours or so.

I didn’t do much of anything today but thought I would post a little sum’n sum’n.

I am still scrutinising Aphra Behn most intricately and she is proving to be a very tasteful writer.

P’raps I might write a less academic review after I have submitted this assignment! I could do with some lighthearted literary writing, as opposed to all these literary devices and analysis of themes. Themes can be so mundane sometimes, fellow humans.

Merry Winter, and Happy Munching!

Hello, I am Doctor Bleep, and Before you Say Anything, Here are Some Antibiotics.

Goodmorning sunshines!

It is the afternoon but I had that little phrase in my head, and the days are so long now (the sun sets at 8:06pm!) that it almost counts as morning. The world is heating up nicely. It is 14 degrees here in England and sunny sunny sunny! I felt the need to shed my layers today, and my brightly coloured flower print top attracted a good many bees while I walked in the fields, I tell you.

Sickness prevails in this family though, folks. Damian has just come off a week’s course of antibiotics, only to come down with another sore throat. I am concerned, of course, there is nothing my mind hates so much as something that isn’t right. And recurring bacteria after antibiotics is certainly not in the normal way of things, and is therefore a morbid cause for concern.

To me, it means that the antibiotics didn’t do as they were supposed to. That the bacteria are RESISTANT.

Can you believe such nonsense!? Who on earth would have thought!?

We all know why, though, don’t we? It’s because our doctors are a little too keen to dole out the bacteria killers, these days. Why, only the other week I had a small lump on my underarm, and the doctor didn’t even have a look at it, he just leant back in his chair and said, “Oh, well, I’ll put you on a course of antibiotics and we shall see what happens”.

I was incredulous. Naturally I declined. You can’t just give somebody antibiotics when you don’t even know if they are being invaded by bacteria.

You know how they say, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’? It comes from a real theory called ‘hormesis’, which is a process undertaken by organisms exposed to low levels of toxins to make them more resistant to larger doses of such toxins. This theory has only recently become accepted as a principal of biomedicine.

Experiments were undertaken on rats and mice, exposing them to minute levels of gamma radiation over a period of time. After this time period, a high dose of gamma rays were inflicted on the creatures, and the results showed that they were less likely to develop cancer from the exposure, than those vermin who hadn’t been exposed at all.

It works the same way with bacteria. If doctors think they can sign off packets of antibiotics for no good reason (I assume because they are commissioned to do so), very soon antibiotics will cease to be effective, and the discovery of penicillin will have gone entirely to waste, and humans will be dropping dead like flies every time we contract an infection.

It is appalling how often doctors where I used to be registered prescribe antibiotics. Once I had gas in my tummy and it was causing me pain, and it had been ongoing for the past two days. So I sought the advice of a doctor and he seemed very frazzled, didn’t even ask for a urine sample, and prescribed me a box of antibiotics which I bought and then threw away.

What a waste. People who really do need antibiotics will be the ones to suffer.