First, there was the whole Covid-at-daycare situation.
Which was thankfully followed by two negative test results!
But then came Thursday evening. Thursday evening was a bit of a bust.
A Dumb Accident
It was typical evening of roughhousing. I was practicing piano downstairs when suddenly I heard screaming from upstairs. I heard Chico calling my name, and I ran.
The Bug was on his knees on our bedroom floor, his right arm limp at his side. It was hard to make out what had happened through his screams, but it involved a twist and a pop.
Assuming his elbow was dislocated, I prepared to take him to the ER. I gave him a dose of Motrin, grabbed a new chapter book, water bottles and our masks, and we headed out.
Three and a half hours, several X-rays and a splint later, and we were home with a new toy in hand, given to him by the doctor as we were leaving. There are perks to going to the pediatric ER!
We had to follow up with an orthopedic surgeon on Friday, and it turns out the Bug has such a small radial fracture that it didn’t even show up on the X-rays.
He shouldn’t need his cast for more than a week.
And Now… Trump Has Covid.
We don’t have Covid, but the president does.
(I should say that what I’m writing about now has little to do with the above. It’s late. I’m tired. It’s been a week.)
I haven’t been on Facebook since the news broke, and I intend to stay off it for a while. I don’t really care to know what people think of this situation.
I cannot wish him ill, though. He’s a monster. He’s the human version of Covid, and yet I cannot wish him ill.
The Value of Human Life
It’s appalling to me the way people here seem to undervalue human life. On TV, in films, and even in the news, I see people throwing away human life as if it were nothing.
I read in the Washington Post a couple of weeks ago, that a dispute got out of hand between some neighbors in Fairfax county, Virginia. They were townhouse neighbors, and apparently for years they had been arguing.
One day, one of the men walked up his neighbor’s front steps. He knocked on the neighbor’s door. The neighbor opened his door, and immediately opened fire on the man. He shot him three times, and the man staggered back. He shot him three more times as he fell backwards down the front steps.
And finally, he shot him as he lay at the bottom of the stairs. Seven shots. The man died before an ambulance arrived.
What kind of country is this?
In the midwest, a young man drove hours from his home to shoot protesters in a city in a neighboring state.
All over the country, people are being shot at and disabled or murdered by the police. And then no one is being held accountable or responsible.
And now, on social media, people are spewing forth with vitriol, wishing death on the president.
I’m sure it happens in other places, too, but what terrifies me about the United States is that devaluing human life seems to be part of the culture.
Whether it’s by arguing about the right to own guns, to the normalization of violence in pop culture, I don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s not just on one side of the political divide.
This disregard for the value of a person’s life seems to be just as prevalent on the left as on the right. The left just seems to be a bit more hypocritical about it, it seems to me.
Tying the Two Together
Though our son was never in any danger this week, a visit to the ER is always enough to give one a little perspective.
My son’s life is just as precious as the president’s.
I recoil at the sight of those words, but the thing is they are true. No one’s life is of greater value than anyone else’s.
That is why Black Lives Matter is so important, because as things stand Black lives are not valued as greatly as white lives. As things stand, a Black man like George Floyd is not as valued as my precious son.
And he should be. Because every single human life is precious. Every single one.
