I am the ’70s child of a health nut. I wasn’t vaccinated. I was brought up on an incredibly healthy diet: no sugar till I was 1, breastfed for over a year, organic homegrown vegetables, raw milk, no MSG, no additives, no aspartame. My mother used homeopathy, aromatherapy, osteopathy; we took daily supplements of vitamin C, echinacea, cod liver oil.I had an outdoor lifestyle; I grew up next to a farm in England’s Lake District, walked everywhere, did sports and danced twice a week, drank plenty of water. I wasn’t even allowed pop; even my fresh juice was watered down to protect my teeth, and I would’ve killed for white, shop-bought bread in my lunchbox once in a while and biscuits instead of fruit, like all the other kids.We ate (organic local) meat maybe once or twice a week, and my mother and father cooked everything from scratch—I have yet to taste a Findus crispy pancake, and oven chips (“fries,” to Americans) were reserved for those nights when Mum and Dad had friends over and we got a “treat.”As healthy as my lifestyle seemed, I contracted measles, mumps, rubella, a type of viral meningitis, scarlatina, whooping cough, yearly tonsillitis, and chickenpox. In my 20s I got precancerous HPV and spent six months of my life wondering how I was going to tell my two children under the age of 7 that Mummy might have cancer before it was safely removed.So the anti-vaccine advocates’ fears of having the “natural immunity sterilized out of us” just doesn’t cut it for me. How could I, with my idyllic childhood and my amazing health food, get so freaking ill all the time? … My two vaccinated children, on the other hand, have rarely been ill, have had antibiotics maybe twice in their lives, if that. Not like their mum. I got many illnesses requiring treatment with antibiotics. I developed penicillin-resistant quinsy at age 21—you know, that old-fashioned disease that supposedly killed Queen Elizabeth I and that was almost wiped out through use of antibiotics.*
“If you think your child’s immune system is strong enough to fight off vaccine-preventable diseases, then it’s strong enough to fight off the tiny amounts of dead or weakened pathogens present in any of the vaccines.”
jesus, take this as a warning protect yourselves please. please vaccinate!
Client: “Is e-mail on the internet? I have no internet, can I still read my e-mail?”
Me: “Well yes, you must be able to get online to view your e-mail.”
Client: “Oh, dear. I can’t see my e-mail.”
Me: “Well, let’s see. Can you open up Internet Explorer for me and tell me what you see?”
Client: “Open what?”
Me: “Your browser, can you open up your browser?”
Client: “My…my…?”
Me: “What you click on when you want to browse the internet?”
Client: “I don’t use anything, I just turn my computer on, and it’s there.”
Me: “Okay. Do you see the little blue ‘e’ icon on your desktop?”
Client: “You mean I have to start writing letters again?”
Me: “I’m…what, I’m sorry?”
Client: “I don’t have any pens at my desk. I just want my e-mail again.”
Me: “No, ma’am, your desktop, on your computer screen. Can you click on the little blue ‘e’ on your computer screen for me?”
Client: “Oh, this is too much work. I’m too upset. Just send me my e-mail. Can’t you send me my e-mail?”
Me: “We…okay, ma’am. Can you tell me what color the lights are on your router right now?”
Client: “My what?”
Me: “The little box with green or possibly a couple of red lights on it right now – it’s most likely near your computer?”
Client: “Lights and boxes, boxes and lights, just get my e-mail for me.
Me: “My test is showing that you should be able to get online right now. Can you tell me what you’re seeing on your computer screen?”
Client: “It’s been the same thing for the last two hours.”
Me: “An error message?”
Client: “No, just stars. It’s black and moving stars.”
Me: “…Do you see your mouse next to your keyboard?”
Client: “Yes.”
Me: “Move it for me.”
Client: “Move it?”
Me: “Yes. Move it.”
Client: “My e-mail!”
This post gave me a fucking ulcer.
You meet people like this at the library. People who have been coming in every day for YEARS to use the computers and monopolize your time with conversations like this, that seem to go out of their way to avoid listening to anything you try to teach them because they’d rather you just do it for them.
So one day, this tiny, frail little woman comes to the desk with a huge folder of papers under her arm. She says “I need to use one of the computers,” and I’m like “alright, I’ll set you up with a guest account.”
And then she says “I’ll also need you to show me how to use a computer. I’m 97 years old and I’ve never even touched one before, but I need to file my health information and they told me I needed to do it using this,” and she holds out a little scrap of paper with a url scrawled on it in a shaky hand.
And I’m just mentally like ‘oh no,’ but I say of course I can help her. So I sit her down and sign her in, and she stops me to ask basically what the mouse is, and I explain it, but I’m just thinking that this is going to take a million years. But I start doing a quick and dirty run down of the parts of the computer, the programs, the desktop, what a url is and what the Internet is, what a search engine is, what websites are, and so on.
She doesn’t interrupt or ask any questions or anything, and then I’m like ‘okay let’s go to this url’ and it’s an interactive, multi-page form that she needs to put all that info in her folder into and submit, and I’m just terrified as I’m explaining it that I’m going to spend all day with this woman.
But she’s just like “alright. I think I’ve got it.” And she must have had a secretary job back in the typewriter days, because she just *whips* through the first page of the form and submits and goes on to the next, and tells me she’ll find me if she needs me.
She came over once to tell me she needed an email address and wanted to know how to set one up – I told her about her options and she picked Gmail and went back to the computer and set it up all by herself, and got her information all filed properly in about an hour and a half – and she’d NEVER used a computer before in her LIFE.
When she was done, she came over to ask me how to turn it off and I showed her and she thanked me for being so patient, and I told her quite honestly that I’d NEVER seen a novice adult pick up using a computer so fast.
And she said “oh, but it’s so simple! And so useful! My grandkids made it sound so difficult, but I’m going to pick up my own computer tomorrow!”
And I think she must have, because I never saw her in the library again.
Anyway I hope I’m that quick when I’m 97.
^ thank you for sharing this very positive experience because the experience from OP really gave me a headache. it was nice to end on a positive note.. gives hope
God I love crocs and their entire family tree so much. These are animals that have remained virtually the same for millions of years-pretty much as close to “perfect” as you can get in nature-and this highly optimized body plan is just. A fat sausage with a mouth at one end and chubby baby arms.
ANYWay, today at hebrew school one of my students told me that hanukkah isnt jewish christmas, jewish christmas is when she and her family go to the local shelter and wrap and deliver gifts to other kids because “that’s what being jewish is, even if its not our holiday” and im still not over it
DustAndFundamentalists 