Footing the Anxiety Bill

My foot itches. I think I maybe got bit by a mosquito but it could be foot cancer. You never know. I heard about a woman who had foot cancer. I’ve tried scratching my foot and then I tried soaking my foot in strawberry jam while scratching my left ear with my right hand, but nothing seems to work. Now my foot doesn’t just itch, it hurts. So I went to my doctor. He said if I left my foot alone that it would stop itching and get better. He said that I probably had been bitten by a mosquito. Idiot! Fool! Nincompoop! Which match box gave him his medical degree? Leave it alone? What a maroon! Doesn’t he know anything about foot cancer! Stop scratching it? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. So I went to a specialist. Who told me the same thing. “Stop scratching your foot and you’ll be fine,” she said. “Strawberry jam is unlikely to make your foot feel better and could very well make it worse.” Collusion! Conspiracy! Clearly, those two charlatans are in cahoots. I’ll bring them up on charges. I’ll turn them in to the Medical Malpractice Foot Fraud Conspiracy Committee. But in the meantime, I have to do something because, obviously, I’m on my own in that the entire medical community is aligned against me. I have to take my foot into my own hands, so to speak. So I went to the gardening store and bought a rake and started scratching my foot with the rake. But that only made my foot hurt worse. Fortunately, at the same gardening store, there’s a machete I can buy. I’m going to make this foot stop hurting or know the reason why not! No series of incompetent doctors and their bad advice is going to come between me and my God given right to have a foot that doesn’t itch. Ah, here we go. This machete looks to be just about the right size…

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I’m having problems with my 14 year-old daughter. She doesn’t want to do anything. She just mopes around the house reading books, making cookies, having her friends over to play Parcheesi. It’s hard enough keeping this 6000 square foot house organized–half my household staff are idiots–without worrying about my daughter all the time. The other day, I didn’t know where they were. It turned out that they had ridden their bikes to the forest on the edge of town and gone for a hike and eaten some sandwiches. Can you imagine? Sandwiches and hiking of all things. So I put her in soccer. She doesn’t like soccer; it’s a struggle to get her up and out of the house. She says the other girls are ultra-competitive and mean. But she has to do something and all the other moms on my street are taking their daughters to soccer. Plus which I read somewhere that soccer is good for children. I’ve certainly never read anywhere that playing Parcheesi is good for children. And hiking? You could get bit by a mosquito. Which I’m pretty sure could result in foot cancer.

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How many of our problems are “self inflicted” and how many are caused by those around us? The woman in the first paragraph above is making her own life harder–and more painful–than it needs to be. The mother in the second paragraph is making her daughter’s life miserable. Her daughter sounds fine to me. For the chronically irony impaired, let me state in a straight forward way: the woman who got bitten by the mosquito should stop making things worse by trying to make them better. The woman in the second paragraph should leave her daughter alone. All those things her daughter is doing–reading, baking, chatting, bike riding, and hiking–are developmentally appropriate. If the child doesn’t want to play soccer, she should not be forced to do so. There are many roads to Rome–some of which even pass through the woods on the edge of town.


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In our culture, it is hard to differentiate what is healthy and appropriate for our kids from what is harmful. Here–again without irony–are my straight forward suggestions:

If your children are taking unprescribed Xanax, you have a problem that is unlikely to go away without intervention. If your children are oppositional, defiant, angry and depressed, it’s probably time to seek professional help.
If, on the other hand, your kids would prefer to read books rather than play organized sports, that’s probably OK. You might even consider being grateful.

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I got a ride with a Haitian cab driver in NY not long after the earthquake had devastated his already impoverished country. Feeling I should say some words of commiseration, I awkwardly muttered how sorry I was and that I hoped that he and his family had not been affected too much by the catastrophe. The cab driver thanked me graciously and said that he had indeed lost one of his three children in the disaster, but that he felt blessed because he knew of other families who had lost all their children.

I learned more from that cab driver than I did from the woman with the 6000 square foot house. I hope you’ll agree that your glass is just about full to the point of overflowing, your imperfect children and your bug bites notwithstanding.