I was reading last night about the Larry Nassar trial and his "pelvic adjustments" of young women, and I could not help but wonder about what was going on in the parents' minds during all the times when he was "adjusting" these girls.
This was not intended as an exercise in blame, but rather a "Would I be able to sniff out bullshit if I saw it?" type activity.
I am not a trusting person by nature, and I'm not sure why.
Most people haven't given me a reason to not trust them.
Perhaps it is the anxiety?
I do know that when my kids were little, and I was looking for a pediatric dentist, I wouldn't even consider taking them to a dentist who refused to let parents come back to view the cleaning and whatever else the dentist was doing. A friend told me about a male dentist in my area who had this policy, and I knew there was no way in Hades I would ever take my kids to such a place.
Until or unless my kid doesn't want me in the exam room and says it to my face, my butt is in the room.
I also know that when I was in college, I went to a male gynecologist who very quickly made me decide I would never, ever so long as I lived, see another male ob/gyn again.
He did not assault me.
But I distinctly remember looking down when he was getting ready to examine me, and he was looking in the wall mirror next to him and fixing his hair.
Now, I was in college, but I had the good sense to think to myself, "Are you trying to impress my vagina with your hair? Because my vagina doesn't give a shit."
It felt perverse to me, and so it was the first and last time I ever saw that doctor.
A cousin of mine worked for him for a time, and she loved him.
I remember her saying he was "smooth as silk."
I'm not sure what that meant, and I didn't care to ask.
It didn't sound like a descriptor I wanted for any gynecologist.
(This cousin also started asking me when I was 17 when I was going to marry my high school boyfriend, so I have never thought she had much sense on the whole.)
Anyway, this memory makes me think that I've got a pretty good "skeezy" radar, an ability to know when things just don't pass the sniff test.
And this makes me wonder whether any of the parents of these girls also had their skeezy radar dinging away.
And if they did, I wonder why they didn't quickly get their girls the hell away from this situation.
And this makes me think of Shakespeare because Shakespeare was all about ambition and the stupid things that ambition makes people do.
I wonder how many parents' radars were dinging, but they didn't listen because of either their ambition or the ambitions of their daughters.
Or perhaps there was another reason, although ambition seems the most obvious.
Perhaps fear? A fear of accusing people who have "authority" of not doing something right and then, perhaps, as a result, their daughters not being allowed to compete (which takes us back to ambition).
I had a recent situation when I might have allowed the fear of accusing someone of doing something wrong to keep me from saying something.
No one wants to come across as a troublemaker, but sometimes you just have to be THAT PERSON.
At D's work, there is an on-site clinic that recently switched from one provider to another.
The first time I took the boys there for their allergy shots, they gave M G's allergy serum which, had it been more potent, could have sent him into anaphylactic shock.
(Fortunately, it did not, and you better believe they were johnny-on-the-spot calling the allergist to figure out what to do.)
I didn't say anything then, but when I went back again, they gave the boys the correct serum but not in the correct arms (and I know this because I paid close attention and made sure to say, "THIS IS M" and "THIS IS G" as I stood right next to them and watched them get their injections.
I wrote a letter to the provider letting them know what had happened and that they were playing with a big honking liability issue. I was contacted by some big-wig in Nevada, who apologized like crazy.
I told myself I would give it one more chance.
The office is now following the procedures to.the.letter, and I am fully prepared to let them know if they do not.
So I said this was not an exercise in blame, but as I write this, thinking about my kids getting an allergy shot mix-up and how infuriated I felt about that, I feel myself wanting to say to the parents, "What were you thinking?"
It is just so tragic.
This was not intended as an exercise in blame, but rather a "Would I be able to sniff out bullshit if I saw it?" type activity.
I am not a trusting person by nature, and I'm not sure why.
Most people haven't given me a reason to not trust them.
Perhaps it is the anxiety?
I do know that when my kids were little, and I was looking for a pediatric dentist, I wouldn't even consider taking them to a dentist who refused to let parents come back to view the cleaning and whatever else the dentist was doing. A friend told me about a male dentist in my area who had this policy, and I knew there was no way in Hades I would ever take my kids to such a place.
Until or unless my kid doesn't want me in the exam room and says it to my face, my butt is in the room.
I also know that when I was in college, I went to a male gynecologist who very quickly made me decide I would never, ever so long as I lived, see another male ob/gyn again.
He did not assault me.
But I distinctly remember looking down when he was getting ready to examine me, and he was looking in the wall mirror next to him and fixing his hair.
Now, I was in college, but I had the good sense to think to myself, "Are you trying to impress my vagina with your hair? Because my vagina doesn't give a shit."
It felt perverse to me, and so it was the first and last time I ever saw that doctor.
A cousin of mine worked for him for a time, and she loved him.
I remember her saying he was "smooth as silk."
I'm not sure what that meant, and I didn't care to ask.
It didn't sound like a descriptor I wanted for any gynecologist.
(This cousin also started asking me when I was 17 when I was going to marry my high school boyfriend, so I have never thought she had much sense on the whole.)
Anyway, this memory makes me think that I've got a pretty good "skeezy" radar, an ability to know when things just don't pass the sniff test.
And this makes me wonder whether any of the parents of these girls also had their skeezy radar dinging away.
And if they did, I wonder why they didn't quickly get their girls the hell away from this situation.
And this makes me think of Shakespeare because Shakespeare was all about ambition and the stupid things that ambition makes people do.
I wonder how many parents' radars were dinging, but they didn't listen because of either their ambition or the ambitions of their daughters.
Or perhaps there was another reason, although ambition seems the most obvious.
Perhaps fear? A fear of accusing people who have "authority" of not doing something right and then, perhaps, as a result, their daughters not being allowed to compete (which takes us back to ambition).
I had a recent situation when I might have allowed the fear of accusing someone of doing something wrong to keep me from saying something.
No one wants to come across as a troublemaker, but sometimes you just have to be THAT PERSON.
At D's work, there is an on-site clinic that recently switched from one provider to another.
The first time I took the boys there for their allergy shots, they gave M G's allergy serum which, had it been more potent, could have sent him into anaphylactic shock.
(Fortunately, it did not, and you better believe they were johnny-on-the-spot calling the allergist to figure out what to do.)
I didn't say anything then, but when I went back again, they gave the boys the correct serum but not in the correct arms (and I know this because I paid close attention and made sure to say, "THIS IS M" and "THIS IS G" as I stood right next to them and watched them get their injections.
I wrote a letter to the provider letting them know what had happened and that they were playing with a big honking liability issue. I was contacted by some big-wig in Nevada, who apologized like crazy.
I told myself I would give it one more chance.
The office is now following the procedures to.the.letter, and I am fully prepared to let them know if they do not.
So I said this was not an exercise in blame, but as I write this, thinking about my kids getting an allergy shot mix-up and how infuriated I felt about that, I feel myself wanting to say to the parents, "What were you thinking?"
It is just so tragic.
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