Missing

Every weekday morning, or so it seems, Good Morning America features a dramatic story about a missing person: an infant stolen from a car parked outside a medical clinic; a young woman on vacation with friends in Arizona, here one minute, gone the next; a newlywed vanishes without a trace on her honeymoon. The details, such as they are, unfold in interviews with relatives, police officials, siblings and friends. Is foul play at work? Was the missing person living a secret life? Who had motive and means? Does the missing person’s husband or boyfriend have a history of cruelty or infidelity, drug use, gambling?

Why do so many people go missing in America? Compared to say, France or England or Italy, is America unique or does it merely appear that more people go missing here because our national media focus obsessively on these stories? And why is it that elderly people rarely go missing? Robin Roberts never opens GMA with “breaking news” about a grandmother who went out for an afternoon stroll and never returned. Is this because we don’t care about old people? Perhaps. Clearly, ABC News likes its missing persons young, female, attractive and/or wealthy, from a prominent family or an unusual background, because, if one or more of these criteria are present, the story is more likely to gain traction and run for several consecutive days, building momentum and drama and capturing an audience.

The American news media always claims to only give the viewing public the stories it wants to hear, which is why crime, sex, celebrity, and scandal rule, and important, but dense and complicated stories like climate change, food safety, war and peace, and how the economy really works and who it works for, are relegated to insignificant sound bites; people don’t care about these matters, not when Kim Kardashian’s marriage is tanking or Charlie Sheen is claiming to be a warlock or Ted Nugent threatens to shoot President Obama with a crossbow.

I wonder if there’s one producer at GMA whose only job is to troll for missing person stories. I can imagine the editorial meetings: what have we got in the way of crime, scandal, celebrity or missing persons? Any missing babies or toddlers or debutantes? You know what we need, what I dream about? Get this: Lindsay Lohan has a baby and then goes on a three-day drug bender during which time she leaves her child on a barstool in some Hollywood nightclub. Then, as she races around town desperately trying to remember what nightclub she was in last, she crashes her BMW into the back of a police cruiser on Sunset Boulevard. Ratings would go through the roof.

Yes, indeed, I can see it and hear it. Day after day, Robin and George breathlessly attempting to answer the burning question: where’s Lindsay’s baby? GMA would trot out its medical expert, its top legal analyst, a psychologist, a reporter covering the police department and another camped on the sidewalk in front of Lohan’s home, 360 degrees of coverage, morning, noon, and night, salacious and sensational, irresistible to the American viewing audience.

Even though it’s Sunday evening, I’m sure the dogged reporters at GMA are working hard to bring us a fresh missing person story for tomorrow’s broadcast.

Big Baby

Upon hearing that I had scheduled the procedure to repair my torn right rotator cuff, my wife said, “Are you going to be a big baby about this?” She proceeded to tell me that I was a wimp when it came to pain, no match for any woman. “Try pushing a baby out of your vagina and then talk to me about pain.” Childbirth, the ultimate trump card in the occasional war between the sexes. I tried mounting an argument in defense of my gender, but compared to a human coming down and out the birth canal, I didn’t have much to work with. A vasectomy hurts, to be sure, with alarming swelling of the testicles, but it can’t compare to 27 hours of labor.

I suggested we discuss the practical aspects of my post-operative recovery, what I would and would not be able to do with my arm immobilized by a sling. My wife rolled her eyes and reminded me that rotator cuff surgery is commonplace, routine, outpatient for crying-out-loud, an ice pack and an Rx for Vicodin, no big deal. Why did I insist on treating this run-of-the-mill procedure like open-heart surgery? O-u-t-p-a-t-i-e-n-t, she repeated, like going through the drive-in. For the first few days it was expected that I might need help buttoning my pajamas, tying my shoes or washing my hair, but if I anticipated her waiting on me hand and foot, well, I had better think again. “You make it seem like I’m having a planter’s wart removed,” I said. Poor baby. Did I have any idea how much childbirth hurt, what it did to a woman’s body, the force and pressure exerted on the pelvis, the stretching of skin and movement of bone? Even with an epidural, the pain could only be described as other worldly. But how could I know, a mere man? Unless I could imagine expelling a cantaloupe from my anus.

This thought concerning that lower region did occur to me: I’m on the can, post bowel movement, a natural right-hander with an incapacitated right arm…definitely a practical consideration of the first order. Brushing teeth or buttering toast with the left hand is one thing, doing a thorough job down there with one’s off hand another. For some reason a vision of Charles Darwin crossed my mind, evolution and adaptation, the triumph of the opposable thumb. Being forced to use my left hand all the time, I would improve the coordination and dexterity of that hand and stimulate my brain to boot, thus scoring a victory over my temporary disability. Evolution on a wee scale. My wife hooted at this: “Only you would make that observation. You’ve never wiped your ass with your left hand?”

No, never. Is this so odd? Does it make me some sort of freak?

Seeing that I was distressed at the thought of being away from kickboxing and weightlifting and running for at least three months, my wife kissed me on the forehead and assured me that she would be there for me, every step of the way, and, if it came to it, she would even clean my behind. That’s a measure of true and enduring love.

But of course I’m still the biggest baby around.