Thursday, October 15, 2009

Folly

Blog Action Day, 2009



I heard Jason calling, "Dad..." and ran into his bedroom. His face was red and his breathing was shallow. I sat down by his bedside and felt his forehead. It didn't seem that he had a fever. I opened the drawer under the nightstand and took his inhaler out. He took a deep breath through it and lied down slowly. His breath gradually became deeper and longer. He fell asleep again.

I looked at his thin body and tried to control my emotions. He was supposed to be in tenth grade now, but his illness forced him to stay home. His body is the equivalent of a twelve-year-old. We had to home-school him for his constant battle with asthma.

"Is Jason okay?" My wife Helen asked when I went back to the living room. Her rash was getting deeper in color. We had cut down our daily meals to once a day, and that didn't help with her condition. There was little selection of vegetables in the market, and meats were rare occurrences. Even if they had them once in a blue moon, we could only afford it twice a year - on Helen and Jason's birthdays. With the increase of prices on all foods, meats have become the untouchable for most people. It was almost impossible to raise livestock anywhere when the vegetation started to recede from the extended drought and long period of flood caused by twenty to thirty hurricanes a year.

Nevertheless, we were thankful to be alive. Millions died each year all over the world in those less advanced countries.

"Honey, we need to take you to the hospital." It was her monthly appointment. The medication was barely keeping her condition in check. Without proper nutrition there was little hope that she would ever be back to complete health. Still, we needed to make the trip.

"What about your lungs?" She looked at me worriedly. I put on a brave face, "Don't worry. We have the masks."

I had damaged lungs from working outdoors for the last twenty years in spite of the mandatory mask. I was forced to retire, and the insurance company refused to pay due to "condition caused by nature." We were barely getting by with the scanty pension I received from the company. I would have been able to sell our vacation home had it not been flushed away by the landslide caused by a category seven hurricane the year before I retired.

The doorbell rang. Helen opened the door. It was our neighbor, Alicia. Jason was old enough to stay home by himself, but I asked Alicia to stay with him just in case. She took her mask off and said, "Make sure you wear the masks. It’s a bad air day out there!" She appeared very pale, but at least she didn’t have depression from the long absence of sun exposure so far. The artificial sun lights did not work that well for some people. Although she was as thin as Helen, she did not have any obvious health problem. She was lucky so far.

"Thank you so much for the help. We won't be gone for long." There were so many people with air-related illnesses that the hospital had developed a system so that we didn't need to get out of our cars. We would drive up to a window and the technician would pull up our records in the computer, verify our IDs, ask a few questions regarding the illness, and dispense the pre-packed medications. Most of the time would be spent on driving to and from the hospital, and waiting in the queue of cars.

We put on the masks before leaving the house. It was only fifty feet away to our car, but the air was too dangerous for us to risk breathing it directly. Not with our conditions.

The sun was burning hot. The thick smog in the air made it look eerily pretty in the color of orange-red. Too bad nobody was outside to enjoy the view. Every window was tightly shut. The street was practically empty, and was a sea of grey to look at. No one was able to keep any plants or lawns alive, and I didn't remember when the last time I saw a real tree was. I missed our trip to the museum last year very much. There were so many plants and flowers it felt as if we had gone to a different planet - a planet that was lush, nurturing and life-sustaining.

I drove away in our electric car and couldn't help but wonder: I read in history books that our great grandfathers had predicted the outcome in numerous studies during the late twentieth century, but somehow they chose not to do anything about it. Instead they fought over political controls and ignored all the warnings from the scientists. Many believed all the doomsday predictions were just sci-fi fictions used to scare people. By mid twenty-first century the severe climate had reached the irreversible point. Last country to ban the use of fossil oil and coal was ten years ago, but nothing could make the earth go back to what it once was.

Whoever said human being was the most intelligent animal on earth was dead wrong. We had dug our own graves with the grand shovel of ignorance decades ago. Soon all of us will have to lie in them.

26 comments:

  1. Wow, very powerful environmental story. The impact of human intouch you give your stories will make yours stand out above all the rest.

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  2. Very nice. I enjoyed this one.

    Didn't know about the theme until today...

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  3. mike - thank you for your kind words.

    hunter - thanks for stopping by. there's still time to start yours. :)

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  4. that was a great bad story sarah, Im depressed enough and halfway thru i wanted to stop reading. But I want to stop living too, but maybe your ending will be happy, so I read on. There isnt any happy ending is there?
    We just go on not learning from our past. We learn of it, but not by it, always repeating the same mistakes :(
    I still will try and think our future will be better, because we always have tomorow to look forward to, maybe today the leaders might learn something from us people that have things to say.

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  5. i'm sorry john. i didn't mean to depress you. you're right - we learn of it, but not from it. we can only hope human will change, and fast!

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  6. Blog action day - thanks for reminding me and this powerful story.

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  7. thanks charlene. there's still time to do yours! :)

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  8. Excellent storytelling. It brings environmental issues to a more personal level.

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  9. thanks mark for stopping by and commenting. :)

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  10. Good story. Reminds me of real life drive by flu shots we had here last year. A dry run to see if we are ready for a disaster...scary.
    Sandra

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  11. Glad I found about about Blog Action Day. Didn't know. Barely managed to get something out there. Mentioned your blog too. Thanks. Sandra

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  12. sandra - i didn't know they had a dry run. i totally imagined that part up!

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  13. Very powerful. And breaking heart as well. We probably need to go through pain before standing up and act properly.

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  14. Found your blog by chance today. I'm very glad i did. What a wonderful story. So emotive.

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  15. lorenza - i hope we will do enough before it's too late, even if this story is just a folly.

    claire - thanks for stopping by. i'm glad you found me. :)

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  16. We reap what we sow. I found goodness in your haunting story in the form of the family and neighbor pitching in to help even though they were all in bad health. Often when the worst happens, the best comes out of people. Seek the positive, somehow you'll find it.
    http://www.boomerpie.com/

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  17. boomer - i tried to keep a positive attitude about it so far. i hope the story is just that - a fiction.

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  18. Thanks for your heartfelt comment today. I looked at Assisted Living today just for the heck of it. Were either of your parents veterans? I found out that if they were, she can get up to $1000 a month to help with her care...
    Just file that away for the future.
    Sandra

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  19. Sarah, wow, our computer had been acting up so I missed this yesterday, what a very well thought out, and well put together blog.
    50********* stars.
    BIG BIG HUGS

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  20. Sarah, you just made an alarm ring in my head with this story of yours. Beautifully crafted and well told story and I appreciate it more for the subject that it deals with. Wish I could send a link of this post to the President and the scientists in NASA. Unlike their many technical and greeky looking journals dealing with the same subject, this story is so simple for even a kid to understand and yet the impact of it in your mind is mighty strong.

    Hat's off to you, Sarah. Bravo! Bravo!!

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  21. bob - i'm glad your computer problem is fixed. i know it can be very annoying. and thanks for the comment. i'm hoping to move more guys if i look at it from a male point of view.

    sambhu - thank you very much. i think the scientists are only interested in numbers, and the president is too busy to read my little story, but still thanks for the thought!

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  22. Wow that was very hard hitting. Liked it a lot

    Kate
    http://secretofficeconfessions.blogspot.com/

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  23. kate - i'm glad you liked it, and hope all is well in the office?

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  24. It seems like this one family has hit the lottery when it comes to bad luck. :(

    I really like the character drama you have in your stories, and definitely think that these short pieces are some of the finest literature I've ever read...I just feel blown away.

    I hope that I can see your comments on my blog once again. Perhaps you can read this if you have time:

    http://dannysignifyingnothing.blogspot.com/2009/10/short-story-1-google-yahoo-merger_17.html

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  25. thank you danny. i'm so glad you liked it. i will pop over to your site shortly. cheers.

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  26. Thanks for the comment. I was wondering if you could give me some advice on how to get more people to view my blog.

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