Cracking Down and Loosening Up

#1368

Cracking Down and Loosening Up

Back in the 1930's someone went to New York City one Sunday morning and complained that the streets were empty, asking a taxi driver, "Where is everyone?" Well, the driver said, its simple, the Catholics are all in church, the people on welfare are all in bed hung over from Saturday night, and Ms. Roosevelt has all the blacks and liberals at Hyde Park for a picnic.

This past Sunday morning, a center of radical liberalism, Penn State University, some thought it so simple to just remove the statue of Joe Paterno outside the Beaver stadium, wrapped in a sheet, and all the embarrassing-insulting-unsportsmanlike conduct associated with the University would "just go away." (Jerry Sandusky-young boys, gym showers, etc.) If it were just so simple to remove the results of the fire just by getting rid of the ashes. The results of radical socialism-liberalism promoted at our nations centers of academia-Universities (Univeristy of Miami, Duke, Penn State, Arizona State, Columbia, University of Texas, etc) will not be so easily removed as a statue. The resulting smut, smoldering, smoke, and smell in the academic meltdown, of true values will long stain the very walls of these institutions to say nothing of the parasitic affect on the minds of those who matriculated there.

I tell associates often, "OLD AGE IS NOT FOR SISS'YS." In the case of this writer, you do not only have ethos-pathos of the young years (poverty, paralysis of opportunity) but the muscular taint from the lethargy of experience. With the failing stamina of energy comes the sharpening of vision, particularly to one who is totally blind and must walk by faith, not sight. (2 Cor 5:7). When I considered the death of Sally Ride, astronaut, unusual woman, she brought back the experience of another.

I remember as if yesterday, the tall black athletic girl who walked into my examining room. She said, "my parents are your patients and recommended that I come to you, they think the sun rises in your back yard."

"I have just gotten my masters degree in physical education, I love anything pertained to playing ball, fast cars, science." I excel everywhere, but these myopic eyes are my downfall. People see these thick glasses and write me off. I understand there are new contact lenses which would take care of this problem. (This was the beginning of the contact lens therapy-small plastic prescriptions that fit right on the eyeball itself) I said, "Contact lenses are the thing of the future, I am fitting them on many young athletic people, girls, like you, very sensitive about their appearance, most would wear thumb tacks in their eyes to get rid of their glasses. Are you that motivated?"

Turns out she was an excellent patient-delirious with joy to get rid of her glasses. She had shown me her athletic glasses, those ugly things athletes had worn in the past, playing ball. Now, this already striking woman could walk on the golf course anywhere else, see and be seen. "The eyes, truly the windows of the soul."

She became so interested in my work that I asked her why she didn't study optometry, introduced her to the famed optometrist-golfer, Dr. Gil Morgan who like Emmet Cary Middlecoff, more famous for his golfing than dentistry. Already with two degrees, she studied at University of Houston and became the owner of several eye clinics, but more famous as an athlete (tennis) and golfer.

Sex is so overrated. I think she knew that I believed her to be homosexual, a lesbian. When I talked with her parents I understood why, an only child, her father obviously wanted a son, always called her, "son" and was much more interested in her working on cars with him than helping her mother in the kitchen. So, she knew all about cars and had some beautiful sports cars which she loved to drive fast. So many of the Nascar drivers were her patients. She had a good, lucrative life which did not include her family other than attending the funerals of her parents. Of course they left her everything they had, but already wealthy, she did not need it. She had taken the life which they had given her and did the best she could with it, a source of pride to them. My entry was only in a professional way.

Dr. Sally Ride, most assuredly fits into this category, I believe she had been married to a male but then spent her life with a female companion and I believe everyone knew she was a lesbian. After 1983 and her years as an astronaut, she spent her time with female academia, a true scientist, perhaps a source of inspiration to many girls who have difficulty with their sexuality. It is time to loosen up and get it all out into the open. I do not have the answers, only one does. Perhaps there's truth to the ancient Greek aphorism, "Know thyself."