Kids with physical problems are sometimes overindulged in ways that turn them into brats. I was one of them. When they behave like brats, they don't get corrected as often as other kids. Adults too often overlook the bad behavior, figuring the kid has it hard enough, which makes the kid even worse.
I wasn't too awful. On a brat scale of one to ten, with five being average, I was maybe around a seven.
An instance of me behaving badly was a time in a doctor's office when I was twelve, which would have been in 1970. I was with my mother and an orthopedic surgeon who'd operated on my left leg. I was in a body cast. The doctor had completed his examination and my left foot was bare. I couldn't reach it to put my sock on and depended on my mother's help. She was talking to the doctor, holding the sock. My foot was cold and I was being ignored.
I snapped my fingers to get her attention and she put the sock on.
"Don't you ever snap your fingers at your mother like that," the doctor said. He growled it.
I was stunned by the reprimand, but he was right, of course.
That doctor was Howard H. Steel, an internationally known chief
of orthopedic surgery at Shriners Hospital for Children in Philadelphia. He had broken my left leg at the knee and ankle to slow its growth to make my leg length discrepancy less pronounced; my right leg had been operated on three times because of the bone disease that resurfaced as a sarcoma a few years ago which caused that leg's amputation one year ago and is likely to kill me despite that. I went through life with my right leg seven inches shorter than the left. X-rays taken when I was eleven determined I'd have been around six two; with the leg breaking I topped at at five nine. It was the most painful operation I've ever had.
Steel died September 5, 2018, at age 97. I'm thinking of him now because he was featured in a recent segment on the radio program This American Life. In the sixties, he and a fellow doctor friend made a bet about getting something published in the New England Journal of Medicine. To win the bet, Steel said he made up a letter about the ill effects he'd experience after eating Chinese food and signed a fake Chinese name. He blamed this on MSG—monosodium glutamate—a non-essential amino acid found naturally in many foods, like tomatoes, grapes, cheese, and mushrooms.
This letter started the half-a-century old myth that MSG has negative side effects. Steel said he tried for years to retract this, without success.
It turned out, however, that there really was a Chinese doctor who had written and sent the letter and that Steel had claimed to have written it as a prank, a prank he continued to the time of his death.
Medical professionals are usually serious people, and working with children with serious health problems would, you'd think, make one even more glum than the average doctor. But it seems that Steel, who I credit with lowering my level of brattyness a point, had his frivolous side.
If I could go back to that day in 1970, I'd say to him, "Don't you ever claim to have written a letter you didn't write."
I wasn't too awful. On a brat scale of one to ten, with five being average, I was maybe around a seven.
 |
| Dr. Howard H. Steel. |
An instance of me behaving badly was a time in a doctor's office when I was twelve, which would have been in 1970. I was with my mother and an orthopedic surgeon who'd operated on my left leg. I was in a body cast. The doctor had completed his examination and my left foot was bare. I couldn't reach it to put my sock on and depended on my mother's help. She was talking to the doctor, holding the sock. My foot was cold and I was being ignored.
I snapped my fingers to get her attention and she put the sock on.
"Don't you ever snap your fingers at your mother like that," the doctor said. He growled it.
I was stunned by the reprimand, but he was right, of course.
 |
| Ira Glass, host of This American Life. |
Steel died September 5, 2018, at age 97. I'm thinking of him now because he was featured in a recent segment on the radio program This American Life. In the sixties, he and a fellow doctor friend made a bet about getting something published in the New England Journal of Medicine. To win the bet, Steel said he made up a letter about the ill effects he'd experience after eating Chinese food and signed a fake Chinese name. He blamed this on MSG—monosodium glutamate—a non-essential amino acid found naturally in many foods, like tomatoes, grapes, cheese, and mushrooms.
It turned out, however, that there really was a Chinese doctor who had written and sent the letter and that Steel had claimed to have written it as a prank, a prank he continued to the time of his death.
Medical professionals are usually serious people, and working with children with serious health problems would, you'd think, make one even more glum than the average doctor. But it seems that Steel, who I credit with lowering my level of brattyness a point, had his frivolous side.
If I could go back to that day in 1970, I'd say to him, "Don't you ever claim to have written a letter you didn't write."
