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Michael McLeod
I had a feeling you would, Jim.
Chime in about the problem of our lack of physicality as a culture, that is.
I've always told Denise, my lovely consort, how demoralizing it must be for doctors to see a growing array of self-inflicted maladies in their patients, young and old. Just as it is demoralizing to her to see learning disabilities - LEARNING disabilities - that are tied into lack of physical activities. I don't understand the details, but I can grasp the basics: that motor skills, developed through exercise, influence and enhance the development of neural pathways and thus the intellectual development of children.
My grandfather, by the way, was a doctor. An internist, as I believe you told me you are. He had his office on East Main Street attached to his house, which was a late-Victorian mansion with pocket doors and high ceilings and a melodian in the parlour, through which you would pass through double doors into the office where he would see his patients.
My mother told a story of how her father once brought her into his office, showed her a patient who must have come in on an emergency basis, and said: "Take a look at this man. He's dead."
I would imagine he was not trying to frighten her, and she certainly did not take it that way. Just an effort to demystify a fact of life.
My mother grew up as a very practical, earthy soul as a result of being a doctor's daughter, and passed that attitude onto us.
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