Unhealthy Obsessions

As a wife and mom, I think it’s natural that I spend a lot of time (ok, I admit it – a HELLUVA LOT OF TIME) worrying about the health of my husband and kids. I worry that my older daughter is too thin, my younger daughter is too heavy, my husband doesn’t eat right, maybe we need vitamins, perhaps flu shots would be a good idea, we all need to exercise more…. ARGH!!!!! I drive myself crazy. Oh – I better worry about THAT too. We get bombarded daily, in every form of media, about what’s good for us, what’s bad for us. We regularly hear about the “miracle du jour” and whether it’s broccoli, blueberries, tomatoes or poking ourselves in the eye repeatedly with a stick – we ALL try it at least once or twice. Thank goodness licking your own elbow doesn’t cure some disease because we all know it’s impossible to do that. OK……… STOP trying to lick your own elbow and let me explain. Good health doesn’t seem to run in my family. My father’s life ended with a massive heart attack at the age of 53. My mother succumbed, after the most courageous fight I’ve ever seen, to a rare form of cancer at the age of 63. My younger daughter stopped breathing, in my arms, at the age of 4 weeks. But! Thanks to infant CPR, that I swore up and down to the instructor I’d NEVER be able to perform on a real child (much less my OWN), she’s just fine and dandy today. This all taught me something. Some things you can help. Some things are just beyond your control. My problem is that I don’t always bother to distinguish between the two. Then, of course, we have the old wives’ tales about health. “Don’t go outside with wet hair – you’ll catch cold!!” FALSE. I know that colds are caused by viruses and I’ve yet to figure out how I’ll get one by washing my hair. Unless there’s something in that cheap shampoo I buy. Note to self: check label. Then there’s “Eating carrots will help you see better at night.” Ummmm NOPE. Well, wait now, they do contain Vitamin A and that’s good for your vision. But, I checked this one out and found its origins pretty amusing. Apparently, in WWII, the British started the rumor that their plane spotters were eating carrots to help improve their vision. What they were actually doing was concealing the truth about the invention of radar. I try not to make up “stories” to get my family to care about their health. I admit I’ve told them, on a few occasions, that cracking their knuckles will give them arthritis. I know that’s not true… but damn I HATE THAT SOUND! And, yes, I’ve told them not to sit so close to the TV. I know the most it’ll do is fatigue their eyes … but THEY GET IN THE WAY AND I CAN’T SEE THE SHOW. The one thing I haven’t been successful at curbing in this house is Playstation2. Blah. You see, I’m one of those funky sorts that can’t play those games because (a) I lack sufficient hand-eye coordination; (b) I lack any interest whatsoever in which button I should hit to jump/drop/shoot/disappear/smack the crap outta someone/whatEVER!; and (c) I truthfully feel nauseous if I spend too much time trying to watch other people playing a particularly active game. So I routinely tell them that they spend too much time in front of the TV when they should be doing something more productive. I generally get a “yeah yeah” from the husband and a “but Moooooooooooooom… I just got my TURRRRRNNNNN” from one of the kids. Then, I get frustrated. Imagine my surprise and delight when I read the following headline on MSN: “Man dies after 50 hours of computer games.” Well WAIT now. Of course I don’t mean I’m surprised and delighted that the poor man died! What I meant was – he gave me ammunition as a lovely parting gift! Seems a 28-year-old man named Lee in Seoul, South Korea sat in an Internet café for 50 straight hours playing a battle simulation game on a computer. He stopped only to use the restroom and to take brief naps on some sort of makeshift bed. He had even quit his job so he would have more time to play games! The daily paper reported that his mother had sent his former work associates to look for him when he failed to show up at home. At that point, he told them he would finish the game and go – but, instead, he died a few minutes later. Ostensibly, heart failure resulting from exhaustion. I hereby dictate that, if anyone under this roof is going to the Great Beyond as a result of exhaustion, it will be from one of two things: helping me out by doing too much housework or simply by having too much sex. Since these are both laughably impossible in my book, I plan to officially instate them as amusing-yet-totally-outrageous wives’ tales – the “old” being left out on purpose. On the other hand, I plan to use “playing too much Playstation will KILL YOU, YOU KNOW!” at every opportunity because I now have PROOF that it’s possible. Thank you, Lee. Rest in peace.