Getting Healthy Again

I HEARD IT CORRECTLY. The radio health advice program said that one in three American children under the age of eleven have type 2 diabetes. At first he said one in eleven, then changed it, correcting himself. One in eleven sounds more likely, since, evidently one in ten Americans have diabetes of one type or another. In Mexico, its two in ten, so, America can take consolation that we are not dead last. In so many other ways we are. Decency and integrity of current national leadership comes to mind, but, I digress. I've been a motion machine since I was quite young, in the sixties, when kids bolted out of the house in early morning, and returned at dusk during long hot summer days, dusty, hungry, but undeterred. In those days our parents were unafraid to turn us loose, unhelmeted, unadorned with electonic gadgetry, and unsupervised. The mothers of the greatest generation knew the odds against misfortune were slim, although, ironically, actually much greater than in today's overly paranoid helicopter parent world. They also knew that we knew where to go when we got hungry, and they summoned us vociferously and relentlessly only when it began to seem that we would risk starvation to complete that one last three on three whiffle ball game. Indeed, the crime rate was far lower sixty years ago then now, even though we were less concerned about it then, and paranoid about it now, due to incessant exposure to catastrophe TV. I like to think that had I had the choice, I would have left my smart phone at home. Now I have a choice, and I don't have one. I'll be damned if I'm gonna be outsmarted by a rectangular piece of plastic and metal. In those days the diabetic rate was much lower, diminishingly small. Somewhere along the line, we became addicted to sugar. My one to two hours of exercise daily were not sufficient to prevent a bout of gout, which, according to my primary care physician, was attributable almost exclusively to my admitted addiction to Gatorade. I didn't think it mattered, I worked out so much. Wrong, A took only a brief hiatus from my fitness regimen to allow the sugar to build up, in my right big toe, a precursor, I am told, to arthritis and diabetes both. Just cut out the sugar. I found sugar free Gatorade, and I'm back on the field. remarkable, the thought that American society need only patronize sugar free substitutes, and the diabetic rate could return to pre nineteen sixty levels. Much the same is true of most world problems; do the right thing, which is the simple thing. A trillion trees, a little more family planning, resource management, and economic sanity, which means planning, and we would all be back on the field, romping freely, happily, all damned day long, on our beloved sandlots of the mind, gleefully ignoring our hunger just a bit longer.