The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good

While we each have our own little personal lives to live, nobody can dispute that news we hear about the lives of others often plays a huge part in how we feel and behave. Sometimes it's for the good, like when the young boys trapped in the cave in Thailand were rescued by all those heroic men who risked everything to get them out. That was heart-warming and life-affirming and certainly put a smile on all our faces, except for one friend of mine who never heard about any of it and didn't care because it had "nothing to do with her" and besides, she was busy deciding what color to paint her kitchen.

The Bad

Then yesterday something really bad happened, and I would never know about it if I lived in the hinterlands or if those damn reporters didn't think it imperative to tell us every last thing that happens in every corner of the world in order to up their ratings. Anyway, we all found out about the sickening sinking of a tourist boat caught in a sudden summer storm on a lake in Branson, Missouri. The debacle was caught on video cameras by witnesses, some in lakeside restaurants, drinking and munching on appetizers and groaning about the horror as the boat went under the waves and the lives of 17 people, many of them children who likely had been so excited to ride on a boat on a big lake, ended right in front of them.

The Ugly

As for the ugly, several nights ago for no apparent reason, although I must have hit it somehow, the top of my right hand blew up, instantly red and angry and looking like it was about to burst open and unleash the entire contents of the universe. After ruling out an insect bite or sting since there was no evidence of such and no insects around, I attributed it to my taking Plavix, a blood thinner that causes internal bleeding at the slightest provocation. (It's still ugly but I'm alive, not trapped in a cave or lying lifeless under 80 feet of water.)