As per requested

Iurgnotmis wanted a book review or an anecdote. As I would probably rip Blackburn’s Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics to shreds (if I were the sort to rip books, I mean) if I were forced to read it again to review it, I’ll settle for the anecdote, thanks.

So, according to my parents, I was a precocious thing (don’t all parents say that about their children? Practically a litmus test for how much you love your child - a snot-covered toddler will be crooned at to the tunes of “Look at the precious darling, creating Rorschach blots all on his own!”.) and I cared, very much, about how others saw me, even at the somewhat unnoticeable age of 4. (Seriously. I have lower than average height for an Asian, and when you factor age into that… I was a short, wispy little thing.)

Anyway, I was short and little and unimmunized, which meant that I had to undergo that ritualized child-torture routine: shots.

Imagine a crying child, abjectly in fear of people dressed in white and long tube things they carry because they stick it into your arm (or your butt if you’re unlucky, I suppose) and clutching desperately to his/her mother/father/parental figure. Then multiply that by like, 20. Absolute bedlam in the hospital, I say.

There I was, in the queue of wailing children, and I decide to be heroic. (This is all apocryphal - I have no recollection whatsoever of doing what follows - but I do remember the wailing children and hospital walls. Some sort of collective unconscious, seared into the brains of scared children everywhere, I don’t doubt.)

Looking up at my father, I pipe, “Don’t worry. Daddy, I’ll be brave. I won’t cry!”

My father, good man that he is, keeps his doubts to himself.

Once on the crinkling hospital cot, I look at the nurse, with her brisk pre-shot preparations, and I repeat my mantra, “Daddy, I won’t cry.”

Then she approaches. My voice begins to quaver, “Daddy, I won’t … cry?”

“I won’t! I won’t cry… I - I …” And the proverbial floodgates opened.

Ah, for the fallacies of youth.

Now, having divulged an embarrassing childhood story, open thread time, people, while I go hide in my hole and blush.

Sevenses