The Wisdom of Children

Over the weekend, my son and I are watching the US Open, and this (much condensed) conversation occurred:

Announcers: ...the personal problems of Tiger Woods...

Son: What problems does Tiger Woods have?

Me: Remember when Tiger had that car accident? He drove into his neighbor's tree? Well, he crashed because his wife was trying to kill him with a golf club as he drove away.

Son: Is she in jail?

Me: No, Tiger won't put her in jail, she's the mother of his children, and he deserved it anyway. She found out that Tiger had 18 girlfriends, and you're not supposed to have girlfriends when you have a wife.

Son: (in disgusted disbelief, naturally) Eighteen? Why would anyone have 18 girlfriends?

Me: Some men like to have a lot of girlfriends, and that's ok...as long as you aren't married. If you want to have a wife, you can't have girlfriends anymore. It's one or the other, you can't have it both ways.

(Long pause)

Son: Unless you keep the girlfriends secret.

The conversation continued as I attempted to disabuse him of the notion that secret girlfriends are ok when you're married, but I guess some concepts are just coded into male DNA.

I also read today about overmedication for acid reflux, which should surprise no one, especially me, who's been diagnosed with acid reflux and prescribed omeprazole as a result. I am, as a rule, skeptical of any medication I put into my body, so I've been taking it sparsely. Even though I eat smaller meals and drink less caffeine, I do still occasionally suffer heartburn over several days which requires a little help to knock out.

In spite of the fact that I've been prescribed one pill for every day of the year (30 pills, 12 refills, must be used by 01/01/2011), and that CVS calls me every month to remind me that I haven't refilled my prescription, and in spite of numerous other reflux-diagnosees insisting that I should take my pill every day, I resisted. Not because I have any medical knowledge, but because of the unintended consequences that often arise from medication, and how they are often just as bad - or worse - than the problems they were prescribed to fix.

So it was with great satisfaction that I read today that these medications, if taken regularly by people with no symptoms, actually caused heartburn when they tried to stop. Not to mention the increased incidence of infection, because gastric acid kills ingested bacteria, and less acid leads to...well, what do you think?

Perhaps I'll be dead someday because I refuse to take a medication the way in which it's prescribed. But I continue to believe that the less medication I take, the better, and I'll try just about any other solution first.

Finally, as a PSU fan, I feel I should have some comment on the expansion of the conference and the inevitable conference title game that will result. But what is there to say? All of the arguments that university presidents and athletic directors use to decry a playoff system - tradition, extra games that will distract players from their studies - have been blatantly ignored, once again, in another obvious money-grab. As fans of college football, we continue to be screwed by rich institutions who don't want to share postseason revenue with the NCAA (as any sanctioned playoff system would require.) The next time you read an article "debating the merits" of a football playoff, understand that it's pure bullshit, meant to distract you from the mega-rich digging even deeper into your pockets. There are no merits that matter here, just who's getting the money. (You might have noticed that I drew the same conclusions about global warming, so feel free to ignore me as a one-note horn.)

BTW - if there are any Big 12 fans out there that have an obsolete Huck the Fuskers t-shirt for sale, cheap, I'm totally looking to buy one.