I took that sugar cube as a child. I also remember the March of Dimes sign on the easel at many stores, all with dimes stuck on them.
I've told this story more than once, and I'm telling it again because it changed my life. When I was a kid I was terrified of needles, and hated getting all my shots. I was a sick kid with a lot of undiagnosed disabilities, and my gramp picked up on the anxiety I had and decided to talk to me about it. He offered to take me to get my flu shot for a christmas gift that year, and when I grumbled about getting a flu shot he said, "well, I had scarlet fever when I was your age. My parents didn't believe in doctors so I wasn't allowed to get my shots, and so I got very sick and almost died."
It stopped me in my tracks. I was 6. I had heard from adults my whole life that shots were important, but I didn't really understand the consequences of not getting them. I asked him to tell me why his parents didn't believe in doctors. He said he grew up out in the midwest on a farm, and his parents were "a type of christian" that believed people got sick because god wanted them to get sick, and going to the doctor was going against what god wanted. His parents were terrified of making god angry, which was something I could understand considering I was raised evangelical. But I was confused because he HADN'T died. I asked him how he'd made it this far if he had never been allowed to go to the doctor and he'd been so sick.
And he told me that when he turned 15 he'd run away from home, hopped on a train that took him all the way up to New York, and started asking door to door where he could get these new vaccines he'd heard about. Everyone told him the air force base was the place to go. He went in, asked around, and got his vaccines. At 16, he had his very first annual physical. Shortly after he met my gram, who was the telephone operator for the doctors office he went to every year for his checkups. And he told me as we sat there in the doctor's office that he was the ONLY person on both sides of his family to live past the age of 60.
I was both horrified and amazed. I went in, got my shot, and he held my hand and said he was proud of me because what I was doing was important. I was still very scared of needles, but it was easier to deal with the sore arm knowing I was keeping myself safe. He lived to be 90 years old, and he was proud to be the first person in his assisted living facility to be vaccinated for covid. When we went to visit him for his 90th birthday just before he died I asked him what he was proud of doing now that he was 90, and he said he was proud of living this long because as a child no one believed anyone could survive the things he could. He said he was perfectly happy to have married, had kids and grandkids, and eat his Applebees knowing he'd cheated death 15 times over.
An opinion piece I photographed from an 1860s small press periodical from Hartford Connecticut.
Get your fucking vaccinations.
🎶Don't be a statistic! We can't go back!🎵
this messed up vintage cat sewing pattern has tormented me since i saw it & like some other folks have done in that post - i tried my hand at tweaking the pattern to resemble the illustration (and my personal tastes) a little more. i've ended up with this, which i have only tested at a small scale and not this final version exactly (where i have done such things as further widening the cheeks and finalizing the leg shapes.) i bestow it upon you nice folks now 👐
go forth and make weird little beanbag kittens! pls show me if you do!
woah this got big!! and after another try i have another untested tweak for yall. this should help the weird pinchy side seams out. yey
I feel like some people need to relearn Genre Expectations... "Man, this tragedy sucks!!! Why didn't they just do XYZ, then everything could have ended happily!!" well, then it wouldn't be a tragedy, would it. "Man, this lighthearted teen romcom is terrible, it's so sappy and unrealistic!!" Well, yeah. If it had been gritty and dark, it wouldn't have been a lighthearted romcom, would it. Is the writing actually bad or are you just trying to order a milkshake from a Home Depot
Reblogging for
I feel like that should be the canned response to anyone who complains in your fic’s AO3 comments about the [thing] when the [thing] is clearly tagged.
I will be using this phrase from now on.
Post is set for a week, let's see how it goes...
it's healthy for academics to have professional feuds. enrichment activity
Holy shit. "The demese ef the Ne'enderthels: Wes lengege a fecter?" published in the Science magazine
short but sweet
Reblog this if you had to learn cursive writing as a child
If you were ever told or were made to learn cursive writing when you were in grade school. I wanna see how many of you suffered like I did.
I enjoyed learning cursive
Killing 68,000 people was United's choice.
Murder by algorithm is wrong.
This is one of the funniest holiday cards I have ever seen.
this has been in my queue for an entire year
this is the christmas card im giving you
Im tearing up honestly, its such a moving message 😔
Chai tea bag + lil but of brown sugar + apple cider packet + 16 oz. mug of hot but not quite boiling water
it will not Fix You but like. maybe. maybe.
Update: this is the best post I've ever made because everyone is sharing their Warm Beverage recipes in the notes. Go check the notes for more Warm Beverages That Will Fix You.