Here’s a thought, maybe people’s growing irreverence for 9/11 is because it was a long time ago and younger generations weren’t as affected by it, or maybe they are so sick of the way it has been basically commercialised by politicians and used as a device to justify incalculable pain and they are tired of it being cynically trotted out every year and told to never forget while every year they are also told to all but ignore mass shootings and US humanitarian crimes.
And like, I dunno, maybe it isn’t about disrespecting those who died but refusing, for any number of reasons, to be a part of the governmental hallmark industry that has built up around it.
If you have a child and they are creeped out by a nephew or older brother touching them or looking at them a certain way, you need to have a serious talk with that person and keep them the hell away from your child. Don’t minimize it or tell your kid to hug them anyway, that kid is picking up danger signals they don’t even understand yet. But so many families will tell that kid they are being a brat.
thankyou
A quick note- this applies to female relatives as well. One of my aunts ignores my little brother’s requests not to hug or kiss him (he has aspergers and doesn’t like physical contact with people he is not very close with). I have repeatedly placed myself between the two of them and had to tell her to back off and stop trying to “desensitize” him. Whether or not there are “danger signals,” it is not okay for adults to invalidate a child or teen’s request for boundaries. We need to teach children now, when they are young, that they can say no to these things and that other people can too.
Hey. LIVING COSTS MONEY! How about giving more money to the companies that employ me and MAYBE I MIGHT BE OK
This is such a funny thing to me because in Thai culture, it’s completely normal to live with your parents when you’re an adult. In fact, most people live in their family home until they’re married ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Saaaame in Pakistan dude and being abroad for grad school is really fucking me up I am not built to be even slightly independent 😂
In Western culture (including America!) it was completely normal for people to live with their parents in adulthood–sometimes until they married, sometimes longer. In America, that changed (for men) in the 1940s and 50s, when it was really really easy for an 18 year old to get a good job that paid more than enough to live a comfortable life on, or to afford college which would then practically guarantee you an even better-paying job. Women joined the trend of moving out at 18 in the 1960s and 70s.
And now those jobs don’t exist, or are few and far between, and guess what! People are living with their parents again. But that 70-year span was just long enough that it fell out of common memory, and now people are seen as “failures” because the economics have changed.
A very great deal of Western culture, ESPECIALLY America, is actually still based on a memory of the 40′s and 50′s as the baseline of normalcy despite them being a total fluke at the time.
World War II and McCarthyism created a massive shift towards rabid patriotism, Christian fundamentalism and the ideal of the “nuclear family” that resembled nothing before it and we’re still recovering from as the majority of our most powerful politicians are old enough that this period of sudden fanaticism is their “nostalgic good old days” and the way they think things are “supposed to be.”
I love when these posts randomly become tiny history lessons, it soothes me
Several weeks ago a pet skunk came in to see me because it just wasn’t acting right. The skunk had been purchased from a breeder and had lived with the owner for five years. Although normally an indoor pet the owner had built an enclosed area in the back yard so that the skunk could be safely outdoors. When the owner first purchased the skunk it had gotten a rabies vaccine and a clean bill of health from a veterinarian but had not been in to see a vet since then.
I walked into the room and saw the owner with several blood soaked paper towels wrapped around his hand. The skunk was in a carrier on the table growling and biting at the bars. I asked him if he was ok and he said yes, the bite was very minor and it happened all the time. Slowly I approached the carrier and the skunk began screaming and biting the sides of the cage.
“Has anyone else been bitten?” I asked.
“Oh, probably my whole family. He’s never been very nice.”
Slowly I bent down to look into the carrier again and the skunk rammed the front snarling and snapping. I felt drops of saliva hitting me in the face. Gently I explained to the owner that I was extremely concerned this skunk was rabid and his entire family and anyone else that had been in contact with the skunk needed to get to a hospital immediately and get rabies post-exposure treatment. The owner was understandably upset and asked me to please look at the skunk close. Politely I refused and told him there was no way I was going to open that carrier nor expose my staff to a possibly rabid animal. After several more minutes of discussion he agreed to allow me to euthanize the skunk and have it tested for rabies but he wasn’t going to go to the hospital.
“What could happen if it is rabies?” the owner asked.
Very sternly I told him, “You’ll die. There is absolutely no treatment for rabies and the only possible outcome is death. You will die. Your family will die. Anyone who has been bitten or exposed to the saliva will die.”
“Is it expensive?”
“If you have insurance it should cover it. If you don’t, yes it can be expensive. But this is literally a matter of life or death. I understand being concerned about medical bills but the alternative is death.”
The owner said he would think about it. I sent the head off for testing and didn’t think anything more about it.
A few days later I got a phone call from the health department telling me that the skunk was positive for rabies. The phone numbers and information the client had given me, which I included on the submission form to the lab, were wrong and the department could not get in touch with the family to tell them they absolutely needed to get to the hospital. I got a little sick to my stomach thinking about the saliva that had gotten on my face and likely into my eyes as well. Luckily I had already had the pre-exposure vaccinations so would just need to get two booster vaccines and would be fine. If the family did not get medical help soon they would die of rabies. I gave the health department all of the information we had on the clients.
A few days later I got word that a man had gone to the hospital saying he had been exposed to a friend’s skunk that was diagnosed with rabies. Luckily that man was able to give the correct information to the hospital and the health department was able to get in touch with the family and they came in and were all treated for rabies exposure. I don’t think they ever really realized how close they came to dying.
There are a few lessons to take home here:
Skunks don’t make good pets. Leave them in the wild where they belong.
Rabies is not an old timey disease that people used to die from. It’s still here and vaccinating against it is still very important.
Give the proper information when you go to the vet! These people probably gave false information because owning a skunk is illegal where they live but vets aren’t interested in turning people in. We desperately needed to contact them to save their lives.
Finally, rabies is nothing to mess with. There is no treatment; there is nothing that can be done when symptoms begin. It is far better to pay for vaccines than it is a funeral.
Rabies spreads up the nerves from the site of the bite. It spreads at a certain rate a day, and will infect different people at different times depending on where the bite was. The important takeaway is that, once the virus reaches the brain, you will die. Once symptoms develop, you will die.
60,000 people die every year from rabies.
Fewer than 12 people in the history of modern medicine have survived it.
Rabies. Will. Kill. You.
And it will not be a quick death. You will slowly go insane. The best any doctor can do for you once symptoms have set in is put you into a coma so you won’t be awake to feel your own death.
If you have been exposed to rabies, GET TREATMENT. Infection without treatment is 100% lethal. Those <12 only survived with intensive treatment, and are statistical and medical flukes.
Rabies is arguably the deadliest virus known to man. Nothing else has such a high lethality rate once symptoms show up.
ugh 