Before I begin to write this post down, I attached my I Phone to my speakers and turned the radio on for a simultaneous listening pleasure. The first song that came up on the local radio station was “Break the Ice” by Britney and the first line said “It’s been a while..” Indeed,it had been a while that I have written anything other than manuscripts, draft proposals, exam papers and poster bodies (and going by the talk with my Prof. yesterday it will be a while before I do anything else!!). My friend called me up last evening and said that he missed the Star Trek because the theatres were full. I burned in envy and replied that the movie I saw yesterday had been my first in the last month (and yes I saw Star Trek after I kept the receiver down!!). So finally as the Spring semester bid adieu, I have a wee bit more time to devote to activities other than the college work. I quickly scanned through all the news websites that I had barely skimmed through in the last month. One of them had a beaming Susan Boyle in her new look. It immediately brought a smile to my lips. Just like millions others I too had been enchanted by the little surprise that she had in store for us a few months back. If you are one of the few who has missed the prime example of how looks can be deceiving, just go and check out You Tube and check her video, each one of which has had millions of views. On a personal front, I too had my ‘Susan Boyle moment’ few days back!!
It was back in April, our chair had asked for volunteers for a health fair being held at St. Martin de Porres , one of the local churches. Me and few of my colleagues volunteered to be a part of it and so on a rainy Sunday we landed in this beautiful church for the health fair. I was assigned to the desk with information on how to eat healthy. It had a set of few questions and lots of information by which we meant to inform people how misinformed they are about what they eat!! As the crowd poured in, I let my Pharm D. colleague do much of the talking and joining in only when the crowd got big enough to be controlled by just one. It was during one of those times that a frail looking, barely five feet, almost 80 year old lady came up to me. I offered her a few pamphlets containing lots of valuable information. She declined and just looked around almost unimpressed. I thought she was just one of the crowd who wanted to get the signatures on the form that would show that they visited all the info desks. But I didn’t want to give up so easily, so I offered her to take one of the short quizzes we had on the stall. Again she gave me an unimpressed look but then agreed to do that. We had a bar of Snickers with us and we asked the people to guess how many calories the Snicker bar contained. The bar said 200 calories but the trick was that companies display information for just one serving while the bar serves for two- which essentially means you end up having 400 calories rather than the 200 on the label. While this knowledge had led to many “Oohs” and “Aahs” from the people who had came in before, she again had the same blank look on her face. She waited for a second, didn’t even look at the bar and answered
“The label would say 200 calories but it actually is 400 calories if you didn’t know!!” she stumped me completely with her spot on answer.
While I stood almost speechless, she looked at the flyers about how and why to reduce the salt in your diet and commented about how you don’t exactly need to reduce the salt in the diet. She suggested that you can instead of reducing the salt, just replace the same quantity with sea salt because it contains less sodium but has more magnesium salts and maintains the same taste. While I stood in awe she got her form signed and then just before she went, she leaned over to say something to me
“Hey kiddo, I am a hypertensive and diabetic since 13” she said with her toothless smile and a twinkle in her eye!!
I waved her a warm good bye and went back to my work making sure that I never ever underestimate anyone in the room ever again!! It was even more interesting to read a research article of Professor Fiske on why we underestimate or stereotype people in certain ways. His research was on how human beings respond to people of low status. If a well dressed, beautiful looking person comes to hug you, your chances of retracting are much lower than when a beggar does. He found the part of the brain that activates in the former case doesn’t activate in the latter case. It is as if that part of the brain undergoes some sort of a “neural dehumanization”. It is something that we inherited from our ancestors to make quick decisions about our surroundings. But the manner in which our society is progressing towards blurring of lines between groups, it isn’t as accurate as before for sure.
So every time when you jostle along the streets and find an old tramp sitting in the alleys with a book of theory of relativity in his hand (as I did a few days back!!), just don’t go by the assumption that he is a rickety old book seller. Who knows, he might be the next Einstein on the verge of his next big discovery!! ;) Till then we all can sit back and enjoy the wonderful sound of our old Miss Boyle’s wonderful youthful voice.
3 comments:
Who was that lady by the way? You did not ask her? I mean it does not sound sane but still. These people are the people who have some wonderful and enchanting stories to say.
She used to work in the church as a Janitor but was retired for a long time now. The thing that fascinated me was how true the statement is that an old patient is more knowledgeable than a new doctor!! :)
I am more surprised by the fact that not many gave the correct answer. Keeping calorie counts is such a big American way of life that it gets to the point of being ridiculous. You presented your observation wonderfully though,gr8!!
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