What Are We Doing?

I am a voracious reader. As soon as I was told about the wonderful code of letters and sounds, I began to read everything in front of me. If there are words in front of my eyes, I'm reading them. Even if I'm not interested. This frequently happens when a cereal box is in front of me while I'm having breakfast. I can't help but read it. Every time.

I not only read currents things, like cereal boxes, but older words as well. Rex Stout (1886-1975) wrote a series of detective fiction stories based on Nero Wolfe and ostensibly recorded by his sidekick, Archie Goodwin. There were 33 novels and 39 short stories about Mr. Wolfe. They were written from 1934 onward.

Wolfe is described as 5'11" tall and weighing "one-seventh of a ton" which is seen as an obscenely large amount. It is 286 pounds.

Even in 1975 nearly 300 pounds was considered quite large. Today – not so much. There are people weighing hundreds of pounds greater than the remarkably obese Nero Wolfe. Not quite topping 300 pounds is almost svelte in today's world. What are we doing? What are we thinking? What have we done to ourselves?

By the year 2003, the last year CDC has in their statistics and handy for me, there was no state in the union with less than 15% of its residents listed as obese. Twelve states were "only" 15-19% obese, four were more than 25% obese, the rest falling in between. This is more than simply sad, it is outrageous.

I could rework this and put it in my own words, but I'm lazy. So a direct copy and paste from CDC: "Over the past 20 years, the proportion of overweight children ages six through 11 has more than doubled and the rate for adolescents ages 12 through 19 has tripled."

Today, parents are all about schools being accountable, the world at large being accountable, everyone taking responsibility for their actions – except themselves and their precious little snowflakes. Okay, large snowflakes. Parents are so busy working to provide for their offspring – Xbox 360 and HDTV are no longer simply extravagances, but absolute necessities. Anyway, it takes so much time and energy to buy them things, that they aren't taking actual care of the kids.

I hear that it takes two incomes to raise a child. Unless it is a divorced woman earning only 70% of men's wages and then it only takes one income. But if there are two parents, by God, they better both be working and exhausted and picking up McDonald's on the way home from another late day at the office. Or maybe just ordering a couple extra large pizzas with everything.

Exercise? Kids need supervision outdoors and so it is easier to just plug in a DVD or a video game and let them vegetate in from of a screen.

Schools had abandoned physical education, but are starting to adopt the programs again because kids don't play outdoors after school. They are in an after school program until the last minute when they are picked up by a frazzled overwrought parent with the sack of McDonald's in the car. By then it is dark and homework has to be done because the schools just expect so much from kids today.

Parents aren't taking any better care of themselves. They are eating the junk food along with the kids. They can barely get through work and routine household tasks without worrying about anything so time consuming as playing a game of catch in the backyard or biking together on the weekend. There is laundry to do and floors to wash and tasks to complete.

How much of that second income that is 'needed' is going to pay for the after school program and the fast food/junk food or already prepared grocery store items? How much is spent on gas for the commute? How much goes to clothing that is workplace appropriate? And to increased tax rates? How much of that second income is actually increased household revenue?

We are selling ourselves and our children so that we can have a super large television set when there is nothing but crap on it. We surrender our health so that we can purchase our children toys that they have no time to play with. We stress ourselves out trying to stuff too much life into each day so that we overeat as a way to ease the stress, which causes more stress as we worry about our weight.

As I walk down the street I see far too many people who make Nero Wolfe look skinny. That's sad.