What passes for a brain in my head has not been wired for introspective examination. If introspection has to do with examining one’s own mind or its contents reflectively, I am here to tell you, that’s not how my mind works. Professors and hand wringers who write op-ed pieces in newspapers and publish articles in learned journals are practitioners of introspective thinking, the “what if” school of thought.
To the extent that introspective thoughts lead me to learn something, introspection ought to be greatly encouraged. On the other hand, when professors write for the magazine Foreign Affairs, for example, it seems to me that they are filling 12 to 20 pages of pure unadulterated blather. If in 1914, France had sent a hundred carloads of croissants and petit fours to Berlin, would there have been no World War I? That is introspective “what if” blather and it should be dismissed out of hand.
Most of the men known to me of the World War II vintage, are not given to introspective examination of the mind or its contents. Nearly all are pragmatists who consider living through the Great Depression and World War II as accomplishments that they don’t wish to revisit. It’s over, so let’s go on to the next chapter. In my own case, it took me more than 59 years before I attempted to recount my story of being a German prisoner of war. And significantly, that story was written as an anti-war piece as the Bush administration was beating the war drums to pre-emptively invade Iraq. That piece was written for my daughters and their husbands to impress the five grandchildren that war is not glamorous, nor is it proper for countries to engage in it lightly.
On the other hand, there are a few old soldiers who apparently want to endlessly relive the war. I have seen old soldier’s clubs with newsletters about various aspects of the war. The Air Force clubs try to recall in their newsletters missions flown 55 or even 60 years ago. Aside from the inaccuracies that must creep in with so much passage of time, all of this effort to recall past glories escapes me. My war is over. Let’s go on to the next act.
Speaking of acts, as a pragmatist, I see no point in reading fiction and my tolerance for mysteries is zero. The plays of Shakespeare and Faulkner, for example leave me to wonder what all the acclaim is about. The theater has a great attraction for me provided it is something I can understand such as “Chicago.” That is a play that I can get my arms around.
All of this serious series of thoughts about introspective examination of the mind, is to say that my mind is constructed to deal largely with what is going to happen as distinguished from events of the past. I am deeply concerned with history. My thought about introspective thinking has to do with those who spend endless writing and lecturing hours discussing, “What if.” And so that brings me to a concern that is not introspective, but is here and now.
In a long lifetime of more than 80 years, I have dodged Alzheimers, Mad Cow disease and gnarled fingers. On the other hand, through the ministrations of the Summit Medical Group, I have survived a series of heart related problems. In the process of ageing, I have lost an eye and had to visit a surgeon for ingrown toenails. For 80 years, that’s not so bad. But this winter brought a mild dose of arthritis, an ailment that had always been ascribed to old people.
My parents would have diagnosed the trouble as RHEUMATISM. I never put much faith in their diagnoses because they ascribed all kinds of ailments to “RUMATIZE.” Of course, my father said “ORT” when he meant “OUGHT,” so that did not help when he diagnosed a case.
A fellow employee of mine in St. Louis always called my ailment “AR-THUR-I-TIS.” That would have been Ken Greenleaf. When he pronounced the word having to do with mixed things, he called is
“MIS-CKEL-ANE-OUS.” So that’s one more diagnostician to be ignored.
When I played baseball, we would often joke that it was not going to be the arm that failed or that vision would blur; it was going to be a disabled knee. That old joke turned out to be not so much of a joke. My right knee started to hurt climbing or descending steps. In that state, a guy like me could not even get out of the dugout, much less play a nine inning game.
So I visited a Summit Medical doctor called Eric Mursky. He is a young fellow and strikes me as quite competent. There were all kinds of x-rays and probings and after a while, Professor Mursky said the problem was arthritis. He pronounced it correctly. He specified an over-the-counter food supplement called Glucosamine Condroitin and said if that didn’t work, he had a series of shots that might help. If the shots failed, he said a knee replacement was available.
I saw Eric Mursky on March 18. When I asked him if he was Irish, he said that was not the case for his side of the Mursky family. Then I told Professor Mursky that for many years an Irish black thorn walking stick had rested just inside our front door. It was a gift from Althea Scheller, a former associate of mine at AT&T. Mursky thought the walking stick was a good idea and instructed me how to use it in my crippled condition.
Now this is the sad part. I supposed at that point that my career as a boulevardier was probably crippled by the walking stick which Mursky proposed that I actually use for walking. I mean it is an inspiring thing to twirl a cane or walking stick around in a man’s forefingers. That makes him a boulevardier, even if he is mustache-less as in my case. But to actually use the walking stick for help in walking kills the boulevardier or Maurice Chevalier act. To use it for help in walking would cause young, toothsome, beauties under the age of 75 to look for a more active suitor. That is to be avoided at all costs.
So I left Mursky’s office to go directly to the drug store to see if Glucosamine would restore the function of my knee. The thought of an artificial knee replacement obviously inspired this old ball player from the sand lots of St. Louis to see if he could avoid such radical surgery.
There are 60 tablets in the bottle of Glucosamine, which at three per day is a 20 day supply. The cost is something like $22.50. By the end of the first bottle, my knee started to feel better. By the end of the second bottle, the steps in this house or outside posed no more problems and I was giving thought to resuming my career as a tap dancer. This is one of the first over-the-counter pills to do what the medics claimed it would do. So long live Glucosamine Chondroitin.
The black thorn walking stick has been returned to its stand near the front door. I walk with no discomfort and I am ready to resume my life as a cane-twirling boulevardier. So if you know of any beautiful, toothsome beauties under 75, send them my way. And I am trying to grow a black Iraqi mustache. That, I’m afraid, is a lost cause.
And finally, I’m here to say that the improvements in my knee are pragmatic improvements. No “what if” about it. Introspective examination had nothing to do with it. It was the pragmatic diagnoses of Eric Mursky and the appearance of Glucosamine that restored this soon to be 81 year old boulevardier to his rightful place beside Chevalier. And “Rhumetize” also had nothing to do with it. As I say, viva Glucosamine.
E. E. CARR
May 8, 2003
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Interestingly, unlike most arthritis treatments, it seems like Glucosamine and Chondroitin are supplements rather than painkillers. Both of them are substances found in healthy cartilage, which I suppose indicates that they’re meant to repair cartilage damage and treat the disease rather than its symptoms. That said, as supplements, they’re largely unregulated and at least some brief research would indicate that they have very limited effectiveness in most people. I’m no doctor obviously but I’m glad these turned out to be effective despite what the internet says!
I wonder why a walking stick — which I remember from Pop’s house, incidentally — stayed in the entry way for so long when nobody actually used it until late in Pop’s life. I also wonder what Pop thought about philosophy, since it’s in a bit of a weird place between fiction and non-fiction. Some of it could certainly be chalked up to frivolous thought experiments for their own sake, but I wonder what take he would have on, for instance, books about the human condition. Maybe Judy could fill in the gaps!