HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2009-07-23, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 23, 2009. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
First it was one hour, then it stretched to
two. I think it eventually got up to two
and a half hours that we were forbidden
to swim after eating.
“Your guts will cramp up and you’ll
sink like a bowling ball,” our elders assured
us.
Dutifully, we youngsters stayed out of the
water, sweating like artesian wells until the
requisite grace period had elapsed. Instead we
played baseball, rode our bikes or ran around
like mindless hyenas.
And one day it occurred to me: how come I
don’t get stomach cramps playing baseball,
riding my bike or running around like a
mindless hyena?
Because it was a myth. Swimming after
eating doesn’t cause cramps.
Sure, you might get one. You might also
get hit by lightning or adopted by
Madonna.
Swimming cramps was just one more Grim
Fairy Tale that oldsters used to keep us kids in
line.
There were lots of others. I had an aunt
who used to bushwhack me at the back door
when I was on my way outside to go
tobogganing.
“Wear your toque and scarf,” she’d thunder.
“Or you’ll catch your death of cold.”
Wrong, Auntie. Viruses, not temperature
fluctuations, cause colds.
Lots of stuff would, though, according to the
gossip in the schoolyard. It was an absolute
given that if you swallowed the stone from a
fruit you were eating there was a better-than-
even chance that a peach, cherry or apricot tree
would soon be taking root just behind your
belly button.
And we all knew for a fact that it was
madness to swallow your bubble gum –
because it took gum seven years to dissolve in
your stomach.
Speaking of assaults on the stomach, did
you, as I did, wrestle with the next-to-
impossible dictum that we all must drink eight
to 10 large glasses of water a day? I shudder to
think what I put my kidneys through, trying to
achieve that quota.
Turns out to be another fairy tale. It’s been
around since the end of World War II but
nobody knows who started it, and no
credible authority thinks there’s any truth
to it.
Barbara Rolls, a nutrition researcher with
Pennsylvania State University says “I have no
idea where the eight-glasses-a-day rule
came from – and I’ve written a book about
water.”
Guilt-inducing fairy tales are still a-borning.
Have you noticed the proliferation of
antibacterial hand sanitizers in hospital
waiting rooms and doctors’ offices? Big
business.
Sales of the germ-fighting gels have
skyrocketed by 80 per cent in the last little
while. Hand sanitizers are so popular they’ve
given rise to a brand new phobia which the
experts have tagged with the memorable
handle HSOCD.
That stands for Hand Sanitizer Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder. Increasing numbers of
people are becoming obsessed with washing
their hands 40 or 50 times a day.
Billionaire Howard Hughes had the same
phobia. And don’t forget: Howard Hughes was
nuts.
Experts say that not only is excessive
devotion to your hand sanitizer more than a
touch anal, it probably doesn’t offer you any
real protection anyway.
Common sense would tell you that a tribe
that’s been around for a couple of hundred
thousand years as modern humans have,
probably doesn’t need hand sanitizers to carry
on, but common sense and folk mythology
have different postal codes.
Take that other modern obsession: obesity.
Everybody knows what causes fat bums, jiggly
thighs and pendulous guts – it’s that darned
protein imbalance, right?
No, wait – that was last month.
You want to know why you can’t do up your
pants? Blame it on genetics, fast food or lack
of exercise. You can also claim an
adrenal disorder, metabolic irregularities or
something truly exotic like gastroesophageal
reflux. (I blame my big butt on polycystic
ovaries.)
The truth, it seems, is somewhat simpler. A
recent study conducted by the World Health
Organization Collaborating Centre for
Obesity Prevention concludes that the rise in
obesity among Americans since 1970
“was virtually all due to increased energy
intake”.
Translation: people are fat because people
eat too much.
Call me a cynic, but a multi-million dollar
study that tracks the eating habits of 1399
adults and 963 children over a 30-year period,
only to conclude that we’re fatter because we
eat more than we used to, makes me feel like
laughing like a hyena.
Which, by the way, they don’t. Laugh, I
mean.
The weird noise hyenas make has nothing to
do with having a good time. Sarah Benson-
Amram, who spent two years studying
hyenas in Kenya says, “In fact, they’re usually
pretty stressed out. Often they giggle once
they’ve been attacked.”
Another lie our parents told us.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Lies our parents told us
Ontario’s Liberal government is
determined to create jobs and is not
particularly fussy how it does it.
The Liberals have not yet stooped to
offering careers for hit-men or fraud artists,
but in quick succession they announced two
initiatives to create jobs that do little to
improve society and in which they cannot take
much pride.
The government put out a news release, to
which no minister seemed willing to attach his
or her name, that it will install a staggering
544 new slot machines at the Ajax Downs
race-track east of Toronto.
This will make a total 800 of what people
used to call “one-armed-bandits,” aptly
because they grab your money and almost
always give nothing back, in this suburban,
mostly below average income area, where
many residents have difficulty buying their
groceries even at the discount No Frills.
The slots will be open 24 hours a day, seven
days a week, as they are in some of the more
than 20 major locations, mostly tracks and
casinos, where the province allows them.
The government says more slots are being
installed at Ajax because demand for them has
increased as people line up on Fridays,
Saturdays and Sundays.
It has encouraged placing 23,000 slot
machines at racetracks and casinos since it
started allowing them in the 1990s.
It says the new slots at Ajax will provide 70
new full and part-time jobs for cashiers, food
and beverage servers, security and other staff.
It claimed the slots are “exciting
entertainment”. They now contribute a large
proportion of the money lotteries and other
gambling raise for provincial and municipal
governments.
The province does not make public how
much it rakes in solely from slots, perhaps
because it is embarrassed to acknowledge how
much it exists on machines that once were
illegal and a dirty word.
But they deprive some who put their
money in them of funds they need for
necessities including food, clothing and
shelter.
Dropping money in slots also cannot be said
to provide any physical recreation and requires
no skills except perhaps the ability to
restrain disappointment as participants
lose.
The Liberals in opposition under Dalton
McGuinty used to oppose them as “the crack
cocaine of gambling,” an insidious way to get
addicted.
Jobs are welcome, but they must have had to
hold their noses when they created these.
McGuinty also should have felt it easy to
control his pride when he announced the
province will provide $263 million to
encourage Ubisoft, a French-based producer
of interactive video games, to open a
production studio in Toronto. He said this
will create 800 jobs, a significant
number considering the way Ontario
has lost employment.
The premier claimed optimistically it will
give Ontario a piece of the action in the
fast growing and lucrative business
of producing video games and is “kind
of like landing a major Hollywood
studio.”
But this studio is not of the stature of Metro
Goldwyn Mayer or Twentieth Century Fox
and does not produce such epics as Gone with
the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.
This company manufactures “games” such
as America’s Army – Rise of a Soldier, in
which participants play snipers tracking down
and killing enemy officers.
And Assassin’s Creed, in which they are said
to experience the thrill of murdering people in
Renaissance Italy.
The company also makes Red Steel, which
is said to allow them to feel the power and
freedom of killing their enemies with bullet
and blade.
And in Call of Juarez they are enabled to use
their gun-fighting skills and arsenal of deadly
weapons to kill anyone who stands in their
way.
McGuinty has said often he wants to
discourage violence in streets and homes, but
his spokesperson said merely it is up to
parents to control their children’s computer
habits.
Creating jobs is not easy, but government
has an obligation to look further than
those that encourage people to throw
away money on gambling and admire
violence.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Someone not too long ago described me
as a person who had found her solace
in family and home.
I thought it was a lovely thing to say and was
honoured to be seen as someone who, in my
opinion, had their priorities in place. Calm and
peace can come from no better, or likely,
source as far as I’m concerned than being
surrounded by whom and what I love most.
So it was nice to know it showed.
That said, those near and dear to my heart
have a big challenge right now keeping my
bliss levels high, especially since they are
sharing the pain. Keeping the old cart of
contentment upright this summer has sure been
a struggle.
The problem? Well... the summer. Or
actually the lack thereof.
A portion of my ‘home’ solace is found on
my deck. But this year, when it’s not too
cloudy or wet to sit there, given my limited
opportunity for down time, it’s been too cool.
Granted there are a few not noticing a
problem with the temperature; my husband has
been finding it quite pleasing. And with those
temperatures sitting in the low-end of comfort
there’s no need for heat or air-conditioning, so
Mother Nature has been doing her part to
improve her own health.
But come on, we just had a brutally long
winter. And even those who like it, know
winter can be a long and challenging season to
endure. However, usually we Snowbelters are
a tough lot suffering with minimal griping
because we know that on the heel of Old Man
Winter comes Little Miss Sunshine.
Her, I adore. I cherish the heat she generates,
the soothing warmth she brings.
Even when she gets a little, shall we say,
hormonal and temperature-mental you won’t
hear a complaint from me. The discomfort of a
hot muggy day is simply an excuse to languish
lazily in the shade, sipping cool drinks and
expending little energy. Where’s the misery in
that? Summer is breathe, time and ease.
Even with the bugs and pollution, there’s no
better place to be than smack in the centre of a
gorgeous summer. Sprawling in a hammock
with a good book while bees buzz and
butterflies flit by you; bathing in, or sunbathing
by, the crisp waters of a pool; walking barefoot
in the grass and hearing the serenade of a loon
while sitting at the end of a dock, well, you
quite simply can’t pay for that level of therapy.
So I join the ranks of those feeling gypped
that the little miss is playing the coquette,
teasing and tempting, rather than showing up
enthusiastically for her scheduled date with us.
She’s been a flirt before. While ‘Never seen
a summer like it,’has been the chant of late, it’s
not exactly true.
Think back if you will 17 years to 1992, and
what is often referred to since as the summer
that wasn’t. My family and I then spent
weekends at the lake, that season waiting for
warmth and sunshine to arrive. Each day
dawned with hope, which faded once we stuck
a nose out the door. Rather than perfect days,
we had several months of April. It was the
season of sweatshirts and sogginess, and
everyone felt deprived.
Of course, that’s life. And being just happy
to be here we take what we get, especially with
the weather. The real pleasures of family and
home make it easier.
But I just can’t help feeling a little regretful
that summer seems to have skipped over us.
After all, it’s another long winter until the next
one. And it’s kind of tough to find much solace
in that.
Liberals holding their noses
Waiting for summer