Ouch! AH!! Ouch!

(AKA I can’t use a firepole correctly AKA My fingers are burning and I can’t Swear*)

Another trip to Storybook Gardens, this time spiced up with a touch of misadventure. I was escorting Max up the rather steep ladders on the pirate ship, all the way up to the two storey slide. Sometimes the slide is a little too intimidating for him, but he was full of gumption and confidence today, so up we went.

On his second trip down the slide, I had a moment of indecision on how to most easily and efficiently get down to the ground to meet him. The previous trip down the ladder had worked just fine, but for some reason I needed to explore my options. My foolish brain leapt to the conclusion that I’d try the firepole. I DON’T KNOW WHY. It’s not like I have any memories of using a firepole successfully, much less enjoying it. Let’s chalk the choice up to curiosity.

Immediately after grabbing the pole and stepping off the structure, I realize I have no idea on how to proceed. Once again, my quick-thinking process chooses the worst option, and I loosen my grip enough to slide a little bit down. With the friction and heat (it was a black metal pole in the sun on an obnoxiously hot summer day) the contact points between my soft flesh and the pain pole start blistering right away.

I somehow made it down to the ground to find my child, as my fingers screamed in a terrible fiery pain.  I spent the next 20 minutes staring at my hands for signs of the flesh actually combusting, and trying to touch absolutely nothing. Of course, it’s impossible to keep one hand quarantined from interaction when you have a curious imp of a two-year old child, but I managed to stifle both my need to swear, and my desire to yelp and cry a little each time anything brushed my hand. As a fun fact, though I couldn’t remember using a firepole before now, this pain was instantly recognizable: I have done this before, and I should have known better.

After a few hours, the pain lessened and there doesn’t look like there’s any real damage. No amputation today.

*An alternate bonus title for the smuttier readers : ” I don’t know my way around a fireman’s pole”

There goes my Dad of the Year award

Cue my emotional overreaction-Max has a……CAVITY! That’s right, being lax with tooth brushing, especially after his bed time snack (and back in the day when we let him fall asleep with his milk bottle in his mouth) has led to exactly the outcome you expect. Its a big ‘un, too, on the back molar.

The appointment for the pediatric dentist will get made tomorrow, and it will loom in my mind until the appointment is finished and he’s fine. The added stress bonus is that they’ll sedate Max to do the filling, and I’ve developed a mild fear of anesthesia. I know he’ll be fine, but I wish I would have worked harder to prevent this from happening to my special little guy. And he was so good at the dentist, so cooperative and cheerful. I am the sad.

My Point About Anonymity, and I do have one

Oh we love our freedoms, especially the ones that let us indulge in our least useful or potentially damaging impulses. We love it so much that we try to invest certain concepts with the power of a ‘right’ and start to behave accordingly. Specifically, the very wrong idea that internet anonymity is a right of every digital citizen. So, so wrong. Bad for the individual, and disastrous for society.

At the heart of the matter is a juvenile desire to not be held accountable for your own actions. The struggle between responsibility and indulgence plays out in every human psyche, and it of course makes its way into popular culture. Three examples: Internet anonymity, wild west fantasies, and the ‘no snitching’ slogans from rap culture.

The romantic version of the wild west has it as a land of limitless possibility and wide open space, where you can do what you want to and the government can’t tell you what to do. sure, you can watch the spaghetti westerns and dream of that freedom, but in reality you still had to get along with the people around you and play by the rules, or you’d get shot.

‘No snitching’ is the most direct and least sensible manifestation, since it advocates turning a blind eye to every crime and misdeed you see, as long as it doesn’t directly affect you. That’s bound to turn out well. Sure, there is a deeper and more complicated element of police brutality and distrust in the urban communities of America, but its usually good business to tell the police when you think your neighbor might be a serial killer.

When it comes to online interaction, the romanticism of creating a whole new you is the centre of argument in favour of anonymity. In reality, being unknown to the people you interact with online only leads to an increase of thick-headed, callous, stupid and sometimes inhuman behavior. If you haven’t heard of 4chan, look it up on wikipedia, but please do not go there.

Human society, the basic tribal connection we share, depends on accountability to each other. Though we struggle against this obligation, in the end we are stronger because of our peers and neighbors being able to watch us and hold us to a better standard of behavior.