Local outbreaks of paralytic polio began to appear in Europe and the United States around 1900. In the US, the worst epidemic occurred in 1952: of the 57,628 cases that year, 3,145 of the victims died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis.
In 1954, when I was eight years old, I was enrolled in the first national tests of a trial polio vaccine. Kids my age, called Polio Pioneers, were used as laboratory mice and given injections of the newly-minted Salk vaccine in a controlled blind experiment. Half of us got the drug, the other half got water. There were three doses, the first one followed weeks later by two more boosters. At the end of the trial letters were sent home telling the parents which their child had received. I can still remember my mother standing in the kitchen, clutching the open letter and weeping tears of joy after learning I had gotten the real thing.
So I never got polio like so many of my peers, including my friend Sue who was exactly my age in a town across the country in California. I met Sue 25 years later when we both worked at the Oakland Tribune; she was an editor and I was the paper's art director. Sue lived her life in a wheelchair, even though she could walk on crutches. "It's just easier," she admitted to me one day at lunch. "And so much less grotesque-looking, since I look like a monster when I walk. I don't want to scare children." She said this with a grin. I asked if she had ever felt bitter about not getting the vaccine in time to protect her. "Not at all," she replied. "People treat me like I'm a princess! They always have."
And it was true. At work I noticed how Sue was always given the benefit of the doubt. Any errors she made were instantly forgiven. Everyone loved Sue, or "Poor Sue" as they called her when she wasn't around. Few people loved me, however, as I was the east coast transplant with a bigger salary than theirs. Also, I could walk, I was a white executive on a predominantly black staff, and I wasn't bad to look at, at least back then. In fact, there was nothing at all wrong with me, or at least nothing that showed. Who could like that?
I stayed in California about six months before my lack of friends and fear of earthquakes sent me scurrying back east. Now all these years later I'm not that great to look at anymore but I'm still white, which means I suck. I'm guessing that if I were in a wheelchair, or morbidly obese, or deaf, dumb or blind, with some sort of apparent deficiency that made me miserable on a daily basis, my whiteness wouldn't be seen as so obnoxious. But I have none of those things, and so I am deemed "privileged" and thus should feel guilty and ashamed and possibly rot in Hell forever.
Well guess what? I'm white and I like it. But it's not all it's cracked up to be, believe me. For starters, there are all the blacks who hate us. That's no fun. As for the privilege, it's true I can walk into Tiffany's on Fifth Avenue without raising any eyebrows, but if you cut me I still bleed. In fact now I bleed a lot more since I'm on Plavix, a blood-thinning drug prescribed after my heart attack last September. So please, all of you out there shouting "black lives matter" as if the others don't, shut up about white privilege. Life delivers the same bad news to everyone: it ends, and we don't know when.
So I never got polio like so many of my peers, including my friend Sue who was exactly my age in a town across the country in California. I met Sue 25 years later when we both worked at the Oakland Tribune; she was an editor and I was the paper's art director. Sue lived her life in a wheelchair, even though she could walk on crutches. "It's just easier," she admitted to me one day at lunch. "And so much less grotesque-looking, since I look like a monster when I walk. I don't want to scare children." She said this with a grin. I asked if she had ever felt bitter about not getting the vaccine in time to protect her. "Not at all," she replied. "People treat me like I'm a princess! They always have."
And it was true. At work I noticed how Sue was always given the benefit of the doubt. Any errors she made were instantly forgiven. Everyone loved Sue, or "Poor Sue" as they called her when she wasn't around. Few people loved me, however, as I was the east coast transplant with a bigger salary than theirs. Also, I could walk, I was a white executive on a predominantly black staff, and I wasn't bad to look at, at least back then. In fact, there was nothing at all wrong with me, or at least nothing that showed. Who could like that?
I stayed in California about six months before my lack of friends and fear of earthquakes sent me scurrying back east. Now all these years later I'm not that great to look at anymore but I'm still white, which means I suck. I'm guessing that if I were in a wheelchair, or morbidly obese, or deaf, dumb or blind, with some sort of apparent deficiency that made me miserable on a daily basis, my whiteness wouldn't be seen as so obnoxious. But I have none of those things, and so I am deemed "privileged" and thus should feel guilty and ashamed and possibly rot in Hell forever.
Well guess what? I'm white and I like it. But it's not all it's cracked up to be, believe me. For starters, there are all the blacks who hate us. That's no fun. As for the privilege, it's true I can walk into Tiffany's on Fifth Avenue without raising any eyebrows, but if you cut me I still bleed. In fact now I bleed a lot more since I'm on Plavix, a blood-thinning drug prescribed after my heart attack last September. So please, all of you out there shouting "black lives matter" as if the others don't, shut up about white privilege. Life delivers the same bad news to everyone: it ends, and we don't know when.
My kinda punchline ��
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