Big Strong Hands

I would have made a great alcoholic.  I was actually quite good at it.  There came a moment when I looked at the condition square in the eye and said, "It's you or me, friend; what's it gonna be?"  and walked away clean.  I'm not sure why, but there was always a part of me that said, "You're not giving up; not yet, goddamnit." 

I was a passible social drinker, and I still am, although I can get silly and loud at parties, but my forte was sitting in a dark corner of Scrooges or George Street, ordering one after another until my mind opened up and let me feel--everything and the darkness flowed in.

"Don't you really want to be a doctor, buddy?"

That was my dad's plan.  The first Campbell with an MD.  My golden boy nephew will soon be the first Ph.D. in several generations.  Daddy was always in a bit of denial that I could barely read or speak or do the math.  I barely got my BBA; my getting an MD would have taken an act of God.  Maybe he knew something I didn't, though.  I can read fairly well now--if still a bit slowly, and math fascinates me.  My speaking voice replaced stuttering with a paralyzed vocal chord, but as long as I have a keyboard, I can speak as well as anyone, sometimes better.  

Healing the hurt was probably always my plan.  It's always been something I spent most of my time doing.  Making a living of it as an actual healer might have been nice.  I have friends who are doctors, and I sometimes really admire what they do.  Sometimes they amaze me.  So long as my patients got better, I would have been really happy and really satisfied.  Patients don't always get better, though.  Sometimes you do your best, sometimes they do their best, and it still ends in suffering and loss.  Dealing with that would have made my drinking much worse.  Dealing with fighting the suffering of others and failing would have made me look into the eyes of alcoholism one night and say, "I need you."  and that'd be the end of me.

I have a friend.  A new friend, actually.  She's a few years younger than my father, and she's from the same zip code as my grandfather.  We may even share some parts of our gene code.  Attala County is a pretty small place, but it's produced some remarkable people.  

She started out at Millsaps, just like I did, then parlayed that start into a medical degree in New Orleans because you couldn't go to Medical School in Mississippi in those days.  She became a pediatrician.  My father-in-law, who I loved dearly, was also a pediatrician in her same class.  When he had a patient who was really very, very sick, she was who he sent them to.  That must have been hard for him.  We shared a trait where it was very difficult to give up trying to take care of people, but there were cases where his skills weren't enough, and he required the help of my new friend, Dr. Amazing.

Her patients weren't just sniffles and bruises.  Her patients were most likely going to die before they weren't children anymore.  Instead of growing up, they would join the lost boys in Never Never Land and never grow up but lost to the world here that loved them.  She celebrated the life of every child that did get better and keeps their file with her in the Skilled Nursing Facility where she now lives.  She can't hear herself play the piano anymore, but she knows the name of every child that passed unto her care.

I wasn't there, but I've heard from several very reliable sources that she attended the funeral of every child who came under her care but didn't make it.  Even writing that now makes me stop and seriously ponder--how could she do that.  How could she possibly do that?  Attending the funeral of children, I learned to love enough to try and treat them and made every effort to heal, only to fail and lose them would have broken me into a million jagged pieces, and she did it over and over as a part of her commitment as a healer.  She's a tiny person.  You could fit two of her on my shoulders, and yet she's infinitely stronger than I've ever been.  

She saved the lives of thousands of innocent children and didn't burst into flames when she failed.  I could never have done that.  Sorry Daddy, but being a doctor was not for me.  That's not to say I didn't have some fantastic failures of my own.  There were several times when I spent years trying to heal someone or something, only to have it spiral out of control and crash into the sea.  I act pretty strong in the face of it, but I'm not.  I'm not at all.  I don't need the bottle anymore, but there are times when I like knowing it's still there, just in case.

There's a book and a movie called "The Never Ending Story" about a boy fighting a growing nothing in his life.  There are only three characters in the book, the boy, his father, and his mother, but they wear many different faces as the boy learns to save himself from The Nothing.  My favorite character in the book is called Rockbiter.  He's a giant, made of impervious stone, so strong that only rocks are tangible enough to use as food for him to survive.  Made of stone, nothing at all can hurt him. He has two friends who he protects, a tiny man with a pet racing snail and an absent-minded bat.  

The boy encounters the Rockbiter and his friends on his way to meet the Princess.  They're happy and enjoying their life.  As the nothing grows stronger, Atreyu encounters the Rockbiter again, only The Nothing has taken his two friends, and the Rockbiter sits alone.

"They look like big, good, strong hands, don't they? I always thought that's what they were. My little friends... the little man with his racing snail... even the stupid bat...I couldn't hold onto them... the Nothing pulled them right out of my hands. I failed.  The Nothing will be here any minute. I will just sit here and let it take me away too. They look like good. Strong. Hands... don't they."

I'm glad I didn't become a doctor.  The Nothing would have taken me away while I sat in a bar somewhere looking at my hands.

The Healthcare Arch

 The way I see it, healthcare in Mississippi works kind of like a roman arch.  Created by the Mississippi legislature in a rare moment of clarity, the University Medical Center forms the keystone.  To its right and left are St Dominic Hospital and Baptist Hospital.  To their right and left are Methodist Rehab and SV Montgomery VA Medical Center.  Under these five stones, every other clinic and practitioner, and facility in Mississippi forms the columnar base of the system.  

Right now, some of the stones in the base are starting to fray and crumble, but as long as the arch itself is sound, sick people in Mississippi can get the help they need.  Real roman arches can last for thousands of years.  This one has lasted a little over a hundred.  We've tried a few times to build some redundancy into the system, but they always failed.  Monitoring and maintaining the strength and integrity of these five stones is probably the most important thing going on in central Mississippi and Jackson.  

There was a time when we didn't have this structure, and Mississippians suffered because of it.  It's vitally important that our legislative and executive branches work to maintain the stability and strength of every part of our health care system.  We don't have a backup structure in case they don't.

Monster Children

Every parent, no matter who they are, wants just one thing.  They want the most expedient, obstacle-free, most easily defined path for their children to feel happiness and fulfillment.  That's it.  No politics, no agenda, nothing "woke"; just help me find a way for my child to be happy.  That's true if the child is dyslexic and prone to being overweight like I was, or autistic, athletic, or even transgender.  They just want their child to be happy.  

I've spent nearly sixty years studying monsters.  You could say I'm an expert, so maybe what I have to say is worth listening to.  Someone is writing bills to make some Mississippi children, who didn't do anything wrong, feel like monsters.  They're doing it for easy political gain, not to address any real issue the state or the state's other children are facing.

It started when cable television programmers tried to make channels dedicated to art and history, culture and science flopped.  People said they wanted to watch these things, but when presented with that choice on their home televisions, they chose more salacious programming, like wrestling and gossip shows. 

Because they'd already spent a great deal of money creating and placing these channels, their executives decided to borrow a page from PT. Barnham and started filling their channels about art and history, and science with freak shows.  One Thousand Pound Sisters.  Big World, Little People.  Honey Boo Boo, Doctor Pimple Popper, and a show about a small transgender child called Jazz.

Like the people in the other shows, The parents of Jazz, and Jazz herself, believed they were raising awareness of the issue, normalizing it, and educating people about it to help other transgender kids on their journey, but the suits back in New York knew exactly what they were doing.  They were charging people a penny a head to see the freak show, and although Jazz wasn't as successful as Honey BooBoo, the pain and trauma this child was going through made them a great deal of money.  It made some money for Jazz and her parents, but nothing compared to what the producers were taking in.

I Am Jazz, on the Learning Channel, did help raise awareness in some people, but it raised alarm in others.  The increase in public awareness of Jazz and her journey made some people afraid that these transgender children would invade their world, and very soon, you started to see legislation about where transgender children can pee, what sports they can participate in, and most recently, who can pay for their medical care and when.  

The best and most recent scientific study suggests that approximately .8 to 1.3 percent of all American children are or may self-describe as transgender.  To put this in perspective, in the most recent study, 19.7 percent of American children are obese, yet despite their much larger numbers, there is almost no legislation restricting the lives of obese children and very little legislation providing for the education and treatment of obese children, and zero legislation restricting the medical treatment of obese children, although there are some very sketchy and questionable treatments available for the condition. 

When I was coming up, there was precisely one openly transgender person at my school.  He was female to male, and to my perception, they seemed very isolated.  Hardly anyone ever talked to them.  In retrospect, I wish I had, but introducing myself to anyone without a specific business plan or purpose was pretty much just not going to happen in those days.  It's pretty rare now.  I had a teammate who liked to bully them, but in ways where he couldn't get in trouble for bullying, "Are you a dude?  You look like a dude.  Why do you want to be a dude?  Are you gonna play football, dude?"  

Watching all this was pretty uncomfortable for me.  I loved my school.  I've recently made moves to reconcile myself with it.  There was one area where St. Andrews was flawed in those days, though.  When there was a student with particular challenges, like autism or deafness, or transgenderism, nobody ever took us aside and said, "this is what's going on with your classmate, and this is the best way to respond."  Sometimes my parents would address these issues with me, and there were times when Mitch Myers would unofficially take us aside and talk about what a classmate was going through, but more often than not, most of these things we kids worked out on our own and poorly.

The legislation you see coming out of certain conservative states, states like Mississippi, has the effect of making transgender kids seem like a threat to people who may not have any exposure to them.  There are conservative politicians actively working to make parents afraid of transgender children and promising legislation to help protect their children from these monstrous, woke, transgender children.  No child is a monster, but I know some politicians that are

Making people worried or afraid of where transgender children pee or what sports they play, or what medical procedures they have is just plain evil.  Whatever else they are, they are children.  The best people to design the life path for transgender children are their parents, their doctors, their teachers, and themselves, not some fearmongering politician looking to attract votes with a meme about transgender kids.  

The parents of transgender children want what every parent wants.  They want a chance for their child to feel happy, to have friends, to feel fulfilled and accomplished in life.  They're not forcing their children on your children out of some twisted political agenda.  They're just searching for a world where their child can exist and have a chance at happiness, just like yours.  They're not monsters.  They deserve better than what they're getting in Mississippi.

 

Elephant Dinner

When I do stuff at Millsaps, people sometimes act weird when I tell them who I am, so a lot of times, I just don't tell them.  It's different with theater people.  They don't know me from my dad or my uncle or the building; they know me from Brent and Lance.  That makes all the difference in the world.  I earned that.  They know I've got paint under my fingernails, just like them.  They know I've spent midnights at Waffflehouse, running lines with a friend, or eating at two a.m. because we've been backstage since four p.m. just like them.  That's just the point.  I'm just like them; come back to support them, to help them feel like the effort they're making is appreciated and worthwhile.

 When I go to ball games, they have no idea who I am.  They don't know I've been going to basketball games at what they're now calling the Hangar Dome since before their parents were children.  They know who Anne McMaster is or Pat Taylor.  "Hey, that's that teacher; what's his name? That's pretty cool they come to the games.  I like that."  They don't know that Tommy Meriweather and I used to carry water and towels for the Lady Majors since before their parents met, but that's the point.  I'm just some random old guy, taking the time to come to their game, taking the time to show that I appreciate what they're doing, that I appreciate that they chose Millsaps.  To them, I'm just some random old guy.  But I'm one guy, and one guy matters.  One guy sees them.  One guy appreciates them.  Maybe sometimes they'll recognize that I've been there before.  "Is that somebody's dad?"

My dad accomplished some pretty remarkable stuff in life.  I was physically there when a lot of it happened, and even I don't know how he did most of it.  Daddy had a pretty simple philosophy in life.  It wasn't Mississippi "awe shucks" false modesty, either.  It's what he deeply believed.  

"Daddy, I've got this big, intimidating task ahead of me.  I don't know how I'm gonna accomplish it."

"Buddy, how do you eat an elephant?"

"One bite at a time?"

"One bite at a time."

It's not an understatement to say I have a second chance at life.  A year ago, I could barely move.  Now I move better than some of you and getting stronger every day.  One of the first things I thought about when I realized I had a second chance at life and what I was going to do with it was, "I've got to do something about Millsaps." 

We function best with around eleven hundred students.  We're not there right now.  There are reasons why we're not there right now, but reasons don't really matter; we still have to get there from here.  We have to eat this elephant.  

I don't have any of Daddy's magic.  I wish I did.  But, I do have determination and devotion, implacability, steadfastness, commitment, and intent.  I can be that old guy at every concert, every ball game, every lecture, and every time the doors open, I can be there.  I don't have Daddy's skills, but I have some skills, and I'm loading that chamber and bringing them to bear.  

I'm a big fan of Rob Pearigen.  If he gets sick, Phoebe is pretty strong herself.  Since this summer, I've been taking the time to get to know the current faculty and administration, and staff.  Some of them I knew from my own time as a student, but the others I'm learning fast what their skills and abilities are.  They're our army.  They're also people who have precisely the same goals that I have in this matter, and that's important.  I'm learning I have strong and capable allies, much more capable than I.  That matters.

"So, who's that old guy that goes to our games?"

"Just some old guy.  He might be crazy."

"Crazy?  How?"

"He says he's here to eat elephants."

"That's crazy; nobody eats elephants."

"Apparently, he does."