When you lift a new pair of slippers out of their box, the first thing you notice (besides the extensive packaging) is that they appear to be identical. There is no right, and there is no left. They’re programmable.
So you make a choice and begin the process of training them to fit your feet, or maybe it’s training your feet to fit them, I’m not sure, but the day inevitably comes when you mix them up as you get dressed in the dark. Your feet instantly tell you how to fix that problem.
As long as you don’t think too deeply about it, living is a bit like breaking in a new pair of slippers.
I was not aware of this until recently, when I could suddenly feel my old slippers again and it mattered after many months which one was right and which one was left.
It’s called “peripheral neuropathy” when you lose the feeling in your extremities. The doctor taps the reflex hammer on your knee and foot but nothing happens. The jerk has come out of your knee. It is common after a stroke.
Not to worry. Physical therapists, or the Internet, can teach you how to get that feeling back. It’s the kind of exercise that hurts just enough to actually feel good.
***
Today, listening to the train whistles as they passed nearby, I remembered a sheet posted in the kitchen at one of the places I worked. It had pictures and words. “Compost these items (food scraps, etc.); Recycle these items (look for a the appropriate symbol); Place the rest in the trash.”
The sign’s creator couldn’t resist an editorial comment: “Almost nothing should go into the trash.”
***
Another programmable element in our lives arrives periodically in the form of election ballots. They’re sort of like slippers, they don’t arrive pre-set for the right or the left. Nothing compels us to vote the way we’ve voted previously.
This year is another election year; most years are.
There are many positions on most ballots. Can you imagine what would happen if a meaningful percentage of voters considered their choices with an open mind?
Aristotle proposed something like that.
So whatever your choices on this year’s ballot, just tap your finger and be glad that peripheral neuropathy — or a tyrant — hasn’t taken your voice away…yet.
(This is an excerpt from an essay I wrote six years ago. Those slippers are old now and have retired.)
HEADLINES:
Accused WH correspondents’ dinner attacker is tutor and computer programmer from California (AP)
Grievance Propelled Gala Attack Suspect Across Country, Authorities Say (NYT)
Inside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as Gunshots Rang Out (New Yorker)
Trump, allies use shooting to press case for White House ballroom (WP)
Iran offers U.S. deal to reopen strait but postpone nuclear talks (Axios)
Iran and U.S. Sink Into Awkward Limbo of ‘No War, No Peace’ (NYT)
King Charles’s security for US visit under review after Washington shooting (Guardian)
The 1939 royal visit and the party that tested U.S.-British relations (WP)
Why Trump’s winning streak at the Supreme Court came to an abrupt end (NBC)
There’s no such thing as the petrodollar (FT)
More countries are turning to nuclear power 40 years after the Chernobyl disaster (AP)
Surviving in a poisoned land: Chernobyl’s wildlife is different, but not in the ways you might think (BBC)
DNA research just rewrote the origin of human species (Science Daily)
These Tiny Robots 50x Smaller Than a Hair Can Hunt and Move Bacteria (SciTechDaily)
AI is making it very easy for the government to spy on you. (NBC)
Regulars Angry Dive Bar Now Popular Enough To Be Financially Solvent (Onion)
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