A Vanilla Wafer in a Milky Way World

I was born, first. It has always amazed me the miracle of birth isn’t so hard to execute; even starting the process — copulation — is way too easy; moving out the slip-‘n-slide birth canal — at least for the vast majority of squirming masses (although I admit, for the mom, it’s no picnic) is pretty straightforward. One way or another, for most beings entering into this world, it’s a piece o’cake. Then, pretty much right away, it starts to get hard. From the second you go from that warm, toasty environment of the uterus, into the uninviting cold, to when the nurse stuffs a bulb syringe into and suctions out your nose and mouth and induces the cry to get you to breathe (and choke) air; it’s the introduction to the reality of a foreign and not so friendly place. And, to add insult to injury, they score you (using the “APGAR scale”) — yep — even when you’re just minutes old, you are being numerically evaluated — how appropriate, given the shock of entering this brave, new world. A bad score can land you into some sort of category of one kind or another, and be the rationale for the various chance occurrences and labels of “ADD” or “ADHD” or “slow learner” or “challenged”. It’s always good to know that such early evaluations can create derogatory labels for later life, or at least explain why one is a behavior problem. <a href="https://medium.com/counterarts/a-vanilla-wafer-in-a-milky-way-world-d83dd3b4b045">Website</a>