On the Job

Years ago, I worked in Business Affairs for a television production company that no longer exists. One day, we were working on the contract for a particular actor to appear in one of our shows. The contract had been typed up and printed. The actor was in town, staying at a hotel. (Was it the Beverly Hilton, Chateau Marmont, the St. James? I don't remember.) His agent had talked to my boss's boss, and they had agreed on one last change to the contract. We needed to make the change, print the revised contract, and have it messengered to the hotel. That should have been easy, but for some reason, it wasn't.

I made the change to the contract and printed it, but what printed was the old, unchanged version. I tried again, with, of course, the same result. It was odd. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, I thought, and asked one of my co-workers to take over. He had the same problem. We could see on screen the updated contract, but it just wouldn't print. We tried different possible solutions, but none of them worked.

In the meantime, my boss, Ted, was fuming. He stood behind us, complaining as we struggled with the computer, his neck and face turning pink. He kept reminding us that the contract absolutely had to be at the hotel by 4:00. The messenger was standing by. "Why can't you get this right?" he demanded. I told him that I didn't know what the problem was and that I couldn't think straight because having him stand behind me yelling about it was making me hysterical. He stomped out of the room.

We continued struggling, but still succeeded in printing only the old version of the contract. Finally, Ted solved the problem another way. He picked up a pen and a copy of the contract and made the correction by hand. The contract was delivered, but the next day the terms were changed again.

I hadn't thought about that day in years, until something recently jogged the memory. I'm more experienced now, and I can think of things we didn't try that might have solved our computer problem. But without a time machine, my hypothetical solutions to a truly unimportant problem remain hypothetical. And if I had a time machine, I wouldn't waste it on that.

I was fired from that job a few months after the contract incident. ("Your position is being eliminated," Ted told me.) Ted died 10 years ago, at the age of 70. I think it is unlikely that he ever remembered me or the struggle with that contract, or that it had any real effect on his overall job satisfaction or happiness in life. I also think it unlikely that, as he neared death, he wished that he had spent more time getting paperwork done on time and meeting the petty demands of people in show business.

 

Finding the Perfect Soulmate

Not long ago I read an article by a young man who had been amazed when he learned that many people from his grandparents' generation had simply chosen spouses who lived nearby, rather than conducting extensive searches for ideal soulmates.

The author of the article was convinced that these old folks had missed out on something important. Nearly everyone he knew was using dating apps to seek the perfect mate, and they were willing to spend a lot of time and travel great distances to find exactly the right person.

Rather than "settle" for the cute girl who just happened to live next door, these guys had very specific lists of what they wanted. Details were important. For example, the profile of a beautiful young woman with an impressive list of interesting and desirable attributes was quickly rejected just because she was a fan of the wrong baseball team.

The sense I got from this article and from others I have read is that many people think they can find true love only with someone whose personality is a near-clone of themselves. The ideal partners will not only have a similar sense of humor, but will have identical taste in food, art, music, and sports. From the very beginning, they'll be able to finish each other's sentences. There will be no disagreement, no disappointment, no discontent, because they will always be on the same page.

It is pretty exciting to discover that both of you can quote all the dialogue from The Princess Bride, take your coffee with triple soy milk and no sugar, enjoy mountain biking, want a pet iguana, have a secret crush on Edith Piaf, and hate green Skittles. And when you both spontaneously recite the same quote from the Dalai Lama at the same time, there is a spark, and the deal is sealed. Nobody else in the world could be such a perfect match. It's destiny.

Five, ten, fifteen years later, it's not unusual for those magical soulmates to find themselves no longer on the same page. One of them spends too much money on useless junk. The other one is a tightwad. They can't agree on whether to have another baby. One of them is lazy, and the other is a control freak. Somebody spends too many nights working late. Somebody gets drunk at parties and flirts. One of them screams a lot, and the other refuses to talk. Neither one can understand how someone who once seemed so perfect turned into this unpleasant stranger. They both want out.

In the meantime, the old guy who married the girl next door has been happily married for sixty years.

Grandpa didn't choose that girl just because she happened to be conveniently close - although that helped. Their families knew each other; they'd lived in the same neighborhood for years, maybe for more than one generation. He and she went to the same schools, knew the same friends, watched each other grow up. He knew who she was before their first date.

Maybe her favorite color was purple and his was green. Maybe she liked chocolate and he preferred butterscotch. The details didn't matter. What mattered was that they shared the same basic values.

Her ice cream preference wasn't important. What was important was that she was kind-hearted and honest. The music he played on the car radio was trivial. What mattered was that he worked hard and she could trust him. They forged a powerful bond, not by seeing the same movie ten times, but by holding hands all night as they watched over their sick baby.

They cared about their kids, and about each other's families. They had plans for the future. They could talk to each other about what was on their minds. Sometimes they argued, but they always made up. They had a few ongoing disagreements, but nothing that kept them from working together to build a life that meant something to both of them.

They might not have thought of themselves as soulmates. But over time, that is what they became.

_{reposted by permission}

 

Your Children's Future Health Care

Imagine that you're in your seventh or eighth month of pregnancy and you go into labor. It's frightening, because you know this is too soon.

You rush to the hospital. Fortunately, you don't live in a neglected rural area where there are no hospitals and you're lucky enough to get there on a day when they aren't overcrowded, at a time when the nurses aren't in the middle of a shift change, on a day that's not a holiday. You get seen right away by the best obstetrical team in the region. Your baby is born very prematurely, weighing less than two pounds. She's alive!

Your tiny child is given the best available treatment, and spends many weeks in the NICU. There are several close calls, but the great doctors and nurses are heroic, and your baby survives, despite being very weak and sick. Finally, she's strong enough to come home. You have a long list of special instructions for her care and feeding. Fortunately, there are no major emergencies. The hospital expenses were huge, but you were fortunate to have a good health plan that covered almost everything.

As time goes by, your daughter still has some health issues, but she keeps getting stronger, and by the time she is ten years old, you would never guess she was a preemie. One day when she's 15, she falls off her bike and breaks her leg. This is a fairly normal problem, so you are shocked when your health plan refuses to pay for her treatment, because she had reached her "lifetime limit" by age seven, It's not easy, but you manage to pay the bill.

You start looking around for a new health care plan, but you find out that your daughter can't get coverage because she has "pre-existing conditions."

"Wait a minute," you say, "I thought pre-existing conditions don't matter because of the Affordable Care Act."

The insurance agent replies, "Don't you remember? The ACA was repealed by the Republican majority in Congress back in 2025, after the Supreme Court overruled the election and installed trump as President. We can now exclude anyone who's ever been sick. In fact, we are about to declare that being female is a pre-existing condition. Your daughter will never have health care coverage. Even if she lives to be 75 - the new retirement age - she won't be eligible for Medicare, since it was privatized and operates under our rules. Sorry." He's not sorry.

 

What is Contraception?

“Conception,” as it relates to pregnancy, is not a medical term. It has become customary to use this term to refer to fertilization, the coming together of egg and sperm. Some people use “conception” to mean the beginning of a pregnancy.

Fertilization by itself does not constitute pregnancy. For a pregnancy to exist, the fertilized egg must implant itself in the lining of the uterus. It is not unusual for fertilized eggs to pass out of a woman’s body without implanting.

Contraception is any method that is used to prevent pregnancy. Contraception is sometimes referred to as “birth control”. Some well-known contraceptives are condoms and birth control pills.

Barrier methods of contraception prevent the sperm from reaching the egg, so fertilization cannot occur. These include condoms, diaphragms, cervical caps, sponges, and spermicides.

Hormonal methods of contraception use medication to prevent ovulation. That means that they stop eggs from being released. These include pills, injections, patches, and implants.

An intrauterine device (typically called an IUD) is a device that is placed inside the uterus. IUDs use hormones or copper to prevent sperm from fertilizing eggs.

Emergency contraception, sometimes called “the morning after pill”, can be used after unprotected sex has occurred. This is a hormonal method that delays or prevents ovulation: no egg is released. Some people confuse emergency contraception with abortion, but they are not the same. An “abortion pill” is used to end a pregnancy, whereas emergency contraception prevents pregnancy. They are NOT the same medication.

Behavioral methods of birth control include “withdrawal,” whereby the man withdraws his penis from the vagina before ejaculation; and “fertility awareness,” also known as the “rhythm method,” whereby a couple attempts to avoid intercourse during the days the woman is most likely to be fertile.

Sterilization is a permanent form of contraception, that removes a person’s ability to produce a pregnancy. Methods of sterilization include vasectomy for men and tubal ligation (sometimes called “tying the tubes”) for women. In some cases, these methods can be surgically reversed. A woman who has undergone hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) cannot get pregnant. This is not reversible.

Note that there are some additional methods of contraception not mentioned here. See the links at the end for more detailed information.

Abortion is not a method of contraception. Abortion ends an existing pregnancy, whereas contraception prevents pregnancy.

Some people believe that it is wrong for women to engage in sexual intercourse for pleasure or love, but that they should have sex only for the purpose of getting pregnant. These people oppose the use of contraception, and advise women to remain celibate if they don’t want pregnancy. Thousands of years of human history demonstrate that this is an unrealistic idea.

Article from Medical News Today explaining conception: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/conception

Article from Cleveland Clinic explaining birth control: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/11427-birth-control-options

Article from WebMD on the history of contraception: https://www.webmd.com/sex/birth-control/ss/slideshow-birth-control-history

Article from History on reproductive rights in the U.S.: https://www.history.com/news/reproductive-rights-timeline

 

Freedom?

I grew up in a region known for being politically and socially conservative. The churches displayed American flags inside the sanctuary. We pledged allegiance in school every morning. People talked a lot about patriotism and freedom, especially freedom as in, "America, land of the free." Freedom meant that we could choose any religion (or no religion), that we could read (or write) any books we wanted, that we could listen to (or perform) the music we liked, and enjoy (or create) whatever artworks we chose. It meant we were free to choose where to live, whether or not to marry, how many children to have (including none), what kind of career to pursue, what clothes to wear, what food to eat, etc.

A saying that was popular in that time and place was, "Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins," meaning that we were free to do what we wanted, as long as we didn't interfere with someone else's freedom to do what they wanted. We were taught to "tolerate" the existence of other religions and people whose way of thinking or way of living was different from ours. "Freedom" was a concept that applied to everyone.

Today, those ideas seem to have changed within the "conservative" community. Many people now define freedom as not tolerating those who are different They seem to believe that the existence of someone whose beliefs or choices are different is an affront to their own beliefs and choices. They want to swing their not-always-metaphorical fists squarely into the noses of those whose very being offends them. They will not feel free until everyone else complies.