It is official. Today at 8:57 a.m. it was empirically proven that there is no correlation between intelligence and the capital letters postdating one’s name. In the university setting and the world over there is a gross assumption that an individual’s smarts can be equated with the prestige of their major, profession, or number of degrees they hold. The majority of the people who believe this have the Ms, Ds, PHs, Js, and BAs after their names and send their children to college, perpetuating a self fulfilling societal farce that masks pedanticity as intelligence.

My appointment is at 8:15 a.m. Blood pressure, no pain, a solid temperature, (and) I am ushered into the exam room. Crappy cologne first, then the doctor himself; sporting a navy blue polo shirt with vertical rows of sailing flags, a detective’s moustache, and high school county championship ring he asks me if I am ready.

I am as ready as I am going to be.

He escorts me to another room where he confuses my right foot for my left foot several times, finally drooling iodine all over my ingrown toenail. Running before walking, he now puts on his exam gloves. Clumsily, he fills the syringe and proceeds to jab my foot six times, obviously unsure about what he is doing, like a toddler who struggles to play with a toy that is meant for a child three years older, a Looney Tunes character trying to blow out its tail.

His plastic hospital I.D. card shimmers on the counter: First Name, Last Name, M.D.

Twenty minutes and my toe is numb. Hunting for the scissors and gauze, he puts gloves on and does the procedure. At one point he yelps, “Wow! Look at all the pus,” the medical professional response to an infected wound. Gloves bloody, he pours through every cabinet in the room wiping blood on all the handles and some of the cabinet doors. My toe hurts but I pinch myself to make sure this is actually happening. A doctor wiping blood all over a room, surely sanitary and surely an 11-year-old knows not to do that.

He can’t find the bottle of alcohol he is looking for so picks up a can that is lying around. Holding it upside down he flips it in the air, displaying that he’s still got his high school finesse, reads it, chuckles, proud of himself, and squirts some white soap on my foot.

No, not actually empirical, but telling. This man has being practicing medicine for decades. He told me so. He has those prestigious, awe-inspiring initials after his name yet he is one of the least competent individuals I have ever met.

Coming off a week of orientation for incoming freshman where I met countless pre-med students, students who want to be lawyers and joint J.D./Ph.D.s, today was a harrowing experience that typifies a crippling lack of creativity within the adolescent/young professional mindset. Intellect, pursuit out of curiosity not a teleological, career obsessed, money making impetus for learning, is lost. Students care about their grades but not their minds. The majority of undergraduates obsess over internships, jobs, grades, and graduate school before they ask questions that might make them better writers, thinkers, or more holistic young adults. Such is the climate of college campuses today and it is blinding, rendering most students unable to function in non traditional capacities and non traditionally in professional careers. Able to pay for Kaplan and get into med school sure, but to think for themselves, take a risk, read a book that is not assigned or on Oprah’s book club, no. Worst of all, this literally mind-numbing set of expectations has become the norm – the laudable norm, the revered doctor, the brilliant lawyer, you must be smart of you have a PhD.

My toe knows better.

Pretty Much The Coolest Thing Ever

Complete with soda, too much food, cake and extended family, the pomp of the birthday celebration August 1st was the same as any other I’ve been to but the circumstance was different. It wasn’t my birthday but it was the anniversary of the coolest thing that has ever happened to me. The coolest thing by far.


During the summer of ’05 I volunteered for an NGO in Kibera, one of the largest slums in Nairobi and East Africa. My project finished before the date of my departure so much of my time was dedicated to letting children pet my milky skin, spending time with people, and doing my best to lighten the mood whenever inappropriate. Up to nothing of note, the head of the organization summoned my volunteer title and volunteered me to paint the clinic. Situated within the slum, the clinic provides basic health care on a sliding scale for residents of the community and was in the process of formal registration in the hopes of getting free vaccines from the government. Regulations stipulated that the clinic be white.


Replete with a coverall, paint and brushes, turpentine, no clue, drop clothes, and a foot stool, I set to work. Unlike my jokes or vague development lingo painting the clinic was a tangible contribution. It made me feel good. The work I did in the clinic on August 1st, 2005, however, made me feel even better.


Hopped up on turpentine fumes, I was brushing away, a veritable painting machine -- the Arnold of slum clinic painting like you’d never believe. Most of the patients just stared at my like I was nuts. One patient was different, in far too much pain to notice the connect the dots pattern spackled on my face, eight centimeters preoccupied.


Another volunteer burst into my studio – there is going to be a baby she effervesced. Flashing back to the Miracle of Life video in Mr. Aptekar’s class my initial reaction was: eww. Another couple of minutes and I poked my head in to ask the nurse to ask the woman giving birth if it would be ok for me to sit in. She said yes. With the paint still on my face I gloved up, put on a white coat and did what I thought I was supposed to. “You are doing great momma,” I cooed in English to a Kswahili speaking woman in labor. She froze me with a look, “shut up boy, this is not a sitcom, this is number six and the last” curtly communicated her wrinkled face. My pit stains continued to grow.


I meant well but took the hint, content to hold her hand and wipe her forehead. With a strong push, there was another life in the world. In that moment, there was a presence in the room bigger than any individual – in the balance of the Earth, creation, destruction, life, death, I saw a child born. There was no conservation of mass in this equation. A new baby in the world, a new person. Slimy, gross and more beautiful than anything I have ever seen, the recently converted amphibian was handed to me. Thirteen seconds old. My hands were quaking. A new person in the world and I was holding him, before the mother, before the father, as he was taking his first breaths.


As the nurse focused on the mom, I focused on the baby wrapping him in a sweatshirt, cleaning him up, in awe. Newborn topped with a hat, the mother in recovery holding her new son, I was now up to effervescing, writing the word “baby” all over the walls of my masterpiece, a best attempt at trapping a the enormity what just happened.


At the end of the day, exhausted, I cleaned up, washed my hands, got dressed and went to thank the mother. Babbling in a mixture of English and almost Kswahili, I told her thank you, thank you, and thank you, my best attempt failing again, unsure of what really just happened but knowing I was forever indebted to her sharing his birth with me.

Asante sana, mother. I can’t thank you enough.

Your welcome, she said, in a tone of voice that told me how tired her soul was. HIV positive, like her husband, neither employed, there was now another mouth to feed.


What is his name?

She looked up at me, her eyes glowing, a smile more sincere than any I’ve ever seen, 'Baby Aaron.

--


August 1, 2006 was baby Aaron’s 1st birthday -- happy birthday baby Aaron.