Lies, damned lies and statistics Oct. 10, 1985
Something’s wrong here. Cheap talk on the radio, some of us
don’t understand.
Not a feeling down deep or we’d rise up in rage. Just the
usual bullshit, we get every day, just more off it.
Sad news, too. Yul Brenner died of cancer today – that bald
man that looked so mean, playing the same role on Broadway (and elsewhere) for the
last 34 years, a real king, the kind of dedication I would love to have,
leaving behind a legacy I envy, 34 birthdays, New Years, Christmases, living a
life that isn’t really his, but became his, and inspiration even though I don’t
know anything more about him than that or the role he played as one of the
Dirty Dozen or that even stranger role as a robot in West World.
Media naturally doesn’t let it go with that, needing to tie
this into the World Health Organization report that says one out of every five children
born in 1985 will grow up to eventually die of cancer. That’s 20 percent of the
new population.
Statistics are always a bizarre thing, we’re always a risk
of one thing or another.
For some reason, this reminds me of when I was being shipped
off to boot camp back in the days when I was foolish enough to join the Army. I
was among the privileged class since most of the others at the induction center
in Newark had been drafted, and because they had less say as to where they
might get assigned, they fell victim to the U.S Marine Corps, whose recruiters
came in, told the draftees to count off by threes – one, two, three; one, two,
three; etc. When the whole lot of them had finished a grinning Marine DI told
all the number threes to step forward, then congratulated them.
“Now you’re in the U.S. Marines,” he said.
I watched their shocked faces as they loaded onto transport
that would take them to boot camp in one of the Carolinas, and years later, I
would wonder how many of them made it, since nearly all of them were destined
to go to Vietnam.
Listening to the news gives me the same heebee jeepies they
must have felt, a sense of impending doom as Madison Avenue and the news media
feed us our daily dose of fear, keeping us so much on edge for so much of the
time, we can’t feel hope or ambition, we can’t plan out the rest of our lives
wondering, are we the one in five damned to get cancer in die? Are me the
number threes that are marched off to some firefight in some jungle somewhere
we never heard of, can’t pronounce, and will come back from not in a taxi or a
train, but in a body bag.
The latest fad for creating fear are hurricanes – although my
favorite non-fiction writer from the New Yorker E.B. White talked about his hysteria
as long ago as the 1950s. Hurricane Gloria is on its way. We need to put tape
on our windows, stock up on water and food, and hide are fucking asses under
the bed with the hope the storm doesn’t breed tornados. Some of the lunatics
sell us on the idea that somehow by driving my car or turning on my lights, I’m
responsible.
I must be responsible for Yul Brenner’s death, or the death
of one out of five kids, because I once worked in a factory or used the wrong
paint on my cold-water flat walls, or let the lead peal from my window sill,
causing all their cancer.
New Jersey apparently is the worst place to live when it
comes to toxic waste and contributes to what they call “Cancer alley,” a narrow
strip running from Philadelphia to Bayonne with me somewhere in the middle,
making me possibly the next Yul Brenner, with God, instead of some U.S. Marine
DI telling me that I’m number three.
The fact that Oregon has the lowest cancer rate in the
country almost makes me regret having left there – not once, but twice – even though
at the time coming back east seemed like a good idea. How was I to know death
waited to greet me as I stepped off the bus at the Port Authority in New York?
My one-time hippie friends blame evil corporations for corrupting
the world and turning it into a cancer mill, telling me I ought to get out there
and protest, forcing these places to close their doors so that one-in-five kid won’t
contract cancer.
I keep thinking of the poor fool stuck in the mills along
the Passaic River, whose pay check feeds his family, clothes his kids, keeps a
roof over their heads, and how I hate playing God by telling them his kids must
starve in order to prevent the one-in-five kid from dying someday, somewhere,
if not in Vietnam, then someplace they didn’t expect to end up in.
And who has time to constantly protest, to rant and rave
about the end of the world that might come a century from now, when we have our
own housekeeping to do, bills to pay, jobs to perform, lives to live (hoping we’re
not number three or one of five)?
Many of these who tell me I ought to protest are the ones
who protested the war back in the 1960s, the college deferred kids, who did not
end up as number three in the U.S. Marines and did not go off to Vietnam, only
feared to, and wanted the war stopped before their lottery number came up.
I’ve come to suspect that all life is one vast roulette
wheel, spinning constantly, waiting to land on somebody’s number. And on
mornings like this, listening to the news, I get more and more depressed as I
wonder when my number will come up.
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