Silence, Reality TV, Selfishness, and Hypocrisy
The setting is Father’s Day evening, at Mike and Sarah’s house with the Messer family, dinner, four cousins five years old and younger running around, typical loudness. Until Tiger Woods lined up his putt for birdie on the 18th green. It wouldn’t have been any quieter in there if everyone was asleep. Of course the TV was silent, golf tradition and all, but I couldn’t believe how quiet everyone in the house was. Then he made the putt, the kids start chanting “Let’s Go Tigers!”, and the action was back on.
Speaking of Tiger – absolutely amazing. Although I did laugh when he backed off of a putt because a bird flew over. Announcer guy: “Was that a bird that flew over?” Announcer guy #2: “Yes, a sea gull!” Both announcer guys go on in general amazement at the concentration required to perform with distractions like birds flying over. All that said though, one of the most amazing sporting events I can remember. Not that they need it, but kudos to all three of the top finishers from me – thought they all held up to the spotlight extremely well. The drama that comes from those sporting events is why I have no use for reality TV.
Back to silence (and then selfishness and hypocrisy). Two years ago Sarah was thrust into surgery, having no idea neither that it was coming nor the diagnosis that would happen after the fact. We were blown away by the outpouring of calls, e-mails, etc., in the weeks and months after that. She’s now readying for a fairly more substantial surgery, in all likelihood, but with the ‘benefit’ of preparing for a month. It’s not so much of a benefit. Dread, worry, and what ifs have entirely too much time to come to mind. Yuck. The silence of not knowing surgery was coming is a little helpful.
Coupled with all that, in general most of those we come in contact with are of the ‘uh, this is no big deal, right?’ opinion. While that’s because of understandable factors – the old line about minor surgery only happening to someone else, my killing everyone with updates that everything was OK, the fact that she did undergo similar surgery successfully two years ago, the fact that she recovered from that remarkably well, and the point that we’ve been basically hoping for this surgery since then – it’s still weird to us, mostly because we have no idea how to respond.
Except for stupid blog posts, and probably even stupid enough for me to point out the stupidity of this blog post twice, you simply let them believe what they already do. Sure, yeah, no problem. Maybe we will get together for dinner after we get back. Like sometime in September or October maybe. Doesn’t feel right to tell them what you really think — that we expect the outcome to be good but the process to suck. Maybe they’re saying it trying to be super positive, or maybe I don’t want to contradict trying to be super positive, or maybe it’s just silly. And they’re trying to be nice and have problems of their own.
And I type this while simultaneously ignoring a request to provide our e-mail update list to a few people who are trying to organize a something, no doubt. Because I don’t want a fuss made or people bothered. The selfishness was the previous two paragraphs, the hypocrisy is now.