I Get Vaccinated and Reminisce About Grandma and Rail About Anti-Science Idiots

The House Where Grandma Lived

I got my first vaccination for Covid-19 today. Actually it wasn’t “for” covid, it was against it. I’m very much anti-coronavirus. Anyway, my upper left arm where I got the shot is a little sore right now but I’d hardly call it pain. I understand that some people feel after effects the next day so maybe I have something to look forward to. Hope not. And by the way, thank you Pfizer. 

Today is the birthdate of my maternal grandmother, Jenny Kurki. She died when I was a teenager back in 1970. My brother and I didn’t go to the closest elementary school when we were kids (Whittier) instead going to Jefferson so that we could walk the half a block from school to Grandma’s house for lunch on school days. About half my lunch everyday went to my grandmother’s golden retriever, Sisu. That’s a name that has much significance to Finns. (Whittier and Jefferson have new names now as does my former junior high, Garfield, such is the march of time.)

My Grandmother spoiled me. She’d make me pancakes in the middle of the day if I asked her to. Sometimes I did. She’d also sit in a lawn chair in her backyard and pitch baseballs to me. I remember once hitting a line drive that conked her in the head. She was momentarily rattled but otherwise unfazed and resumed pitching. I also remember spending the night at her house once and as she talked me into the sofa bed she started tickling me. I kicked my legs out as I giggled with glee and one foot landed solidly in her belly. It took out her breath and for a few seconds I was as scared as I’d ever been thinking that I’d badly injured my grandmother. She was fine though. 

In doing some genealogy research last Summer my wife discovered two things about my grandmother: one was that she was ten years older than her stated age and thus ten years older than my grandfather (who preceded her in death by ten years) and that she gave birth to my mother only a few months after marrying. Wow, grandma. 

Grandma was a big one for going to church. But then again it was a Lutheran church so it wasn’t much of an infringement on anyone else’s life and she never proselytized. I remember she liked to go those epic bible films that were big for a time, like King of Kings.

My wife had it a lot rougher than me as a child. She was born into a Southern Baptist church and couldn’t even go to the movies until she was nearly a teenager. Having parents ram their religion down a child’s throat can mess a kid up. Especially if your parents are the kind who put way more faith in praying than they do in doctor’s or medicine. There are still cases of children dying or being really sick or infecting other children because of their parents’ stubborn belief that the power of prayer supersedes a vaccination or doctor visit.

I guess we’re back to vaccinations now….. I read that a third of Americans are taking a “wait and see” approach to the Covid vaccinations. Waiting and seeing if you die is one approach, I suppose. This all baffles me. When I grew up it seemed everyone had great faith in science and medicine and believed what experts in fields said. Sure we’ve been misled by politicians and foreign policy experts and even some economists, but the hard sciences are pretty reliable. They got us to the moon when I was a kid which people were pretty darn impressed by. Now there are idiots who think the whole moon landing was faked. It seems — and I could be wrong on this because I’m no expert — that more people believe in conspiracy theories today than when I was a kid. The thing is that some conspiracies are real. For example there’s no question in my mind but that John F. Kennedy was killed as a result of a conspiracy and that was probably the case with his younger brother Bobby and maybe even with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. though I don’t know nearly as much about that case.

Cousin to the conspiracy theory is the, “I just bet that what they really did…” or a variations thereof. You hear these all the time. People feel damn sure of themselves as they “just bet” that the real reason something happened, or the real reason for a particular plan is….well, they fill in the blank with whatever pops into their head. Then one of the people who they were talking too, or who reads their comment on social media thinks that what they said makes sense and it spreads. That’s pretty much what QAnon is all about. Makes me wonder which one of these idiots said, “I bethcya the Democrats are all a bunch of pedophiles.” (What it is with the right and pedophilia is beyond me.)

I was looking for something on You Tube once and came across a news story about a supposed Bigfoot sighting in Utah. I watched it and noted that there was little evidence to support the claim that the mythic creature had been found and a scientist of some sort give a likely explanation as to what had been seen. One of the comments below the video was from a kook who said, among other things, “these scientists don’t know what they’re talking about.” Yes, actually they do. Sure, some of them are wrong sometimes, but when it comes to their field of expertise they generally know of what they speak. It’s funny because when a mechanic tells someone what’s wrong with their car, you never hear, “bah, these mechanics don’t know what they’re talking about.” Same with dentists. “My dentist said I had an impacted molar but these dentists don’t know what they’re talking about.”

For some reasons it’s scientists who are just making shit up. 

People don’t have respect for certain professions. I was on a bus to a baseball game once and there were a few teens on the bus acting up. Some old coot said to his wife, “that’s what they teach ‘em in school.” I was a middle school teacher at the time and said, “no, we don’t.” The old geezer just looked away.

Anyway, like I said I got the first shot today. Next one in three weeks. Then I can go out carousing again. Not that I will.