We ended up with quite a crowd this 4th of July. A very diverse group. Recent college grads and young active military members. An advertising account executive and a medical student, one chef, a computer sales representative and an aspiring lobbyist. There was an information technology engineer whose work we never quite figured out, a trainee firefighter, an emergency medical technician and a former police officer. Plus a retired auto mechanic, a Latin American scholar, a former advertising creative director, one hockey player, a young father with his three-year-old son and four large dogs who cared nothing for the wide-ranging conversations and confined their rapt attention to the grill.
You know how conversations go. Everyone has a set piece, a favorite topic. Everyone has an opinion. We covered automobile accidents and drunk driving, airbags and mandatory bicycle helmets. Suburban sprawl and sports utility vehicles received equal time. So did the Texas tobacco settlement and California smoking bans. We got around to the U.S. prison and court systems, three-strike laws, drug use and abuse, welfare, workfare and the ubiquitous "it takes a village..." platitudes. The power of advertising, advocacy and lobbying got a fair share of attention.
There were a few heated arguments early on, but the atmosphere remained largely congenial. Later in the evening, before the group broke up to go see fireworks, logy with brisket, ribs and various slaws, salads and desserts, a rather lovely thing happened. We began to communicate.
The former police officer and the young father (a convicted felon who has had tremendous difficulty qualifying for rental property in safe parts of town and getting a good job because of his criminal record) agreed that they had more in common than they'd thought. The retired officer had, himself, raised a son under difficult circumstances -- but in a time far less harshly judgmental toward people trying to improve their lives. He agreed to return to Los Angeles and contact the local parole board to see what could be done about helping the "guys who paid their time for their crime" get on with their lives without getting trapped in the barrios and ghettos by restrictive rental policies. On his part, the young father agreed to look at local police officers as humans, not sworn enemies.
The EM technician, an up-close-and-personal witness to the aftermath of vehicle collisions, had a surprising attitude about automobile safety devices and drunk driving laws. He informed us that by 4:00 pm on Independence Day, 29 people had died in 21 crashes along Texas roads. Seventeen people had not been wearing seat belts, three of the crashes appeared to involve alcohol. He noted that, while it appeared that seat belts saved lives, he was going to reserve his opinion of the final count until he heard how many seat belt wearers had been decapitated by their shoulder harnesses. He wished people didn't automatically think that wearing a seat belt conferred an immunity from death.
The medical student, a diminutive young woman, was infuriated by mandatory air bags. She had been trying for nine months to get her driver side airbag disconnected. While she acknowledged that air bags could save lives and minimize some injuries, she was personally concerned about being killed by hers and didn't think they should be required safety equipment. The EMT disagreed. At first. Then changed his mind when informed of the number of children and small adults who had be killed by their airbags at relatively low speeds. Interestingly, neither thought drunk driving laws had much effect on the fatality rates. Their consensus was that drunk drivers are going to drive drunk, while responsible drivers were going to drive responsibly. I found that oddly reassuring for some reason. Neither was promoting government involvement in issues of personal responsibility. There's hope here.
We nearly had pre fireworks fireworks over advocacy versus lobbying, smoking bans and welfare versus workfare and the definition of grass roots movements. What saved the evening? Facts. It was fascinating. Proponents of one view or another were armed with facts. But proponents of the opposing view were armed with other facts. It became clear that both sets couldn't be "true facts." Indeed, many statistics simply canceled one another out. The best information came from disinterested parties. The smoking ban advocate was interested to learn from the advertising account exec that the head of Tobacco Free Kids was a consummate public relations maven -- with a large private firm that represented pharmaceutical companies (makers of nicotine replacement drugs), and profitable ties to the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pro bono work for outfits like the American Cancer Society had resulted in millions of dollars in funding for the Kid program. I didn't know that. Gives a whole 'nother spin to the concept of pro bono, doesn't it?
Everyone got a good laugh over the VOC emissions from the barbecue -- hallowed American tradition -- which far outranked a few passing whiffs of cigarette smoke in terms of Class A human carcinogens. The Food Police came in for a tremendous thrashing. From everyone -- especially the chef. He offered lots of information about flavor and mouth feel (food texture) and was interested to learn of a post-graduate program in England where physicians were treated to various meals designed around disease prevention and health enhancement. The medical student wasn't at all convinced that diet did a damned thing for cholesterol levels.
Several wondered why so many people were fat and out of shape. Several of the older debaters felt that air conditioning and climate controlled buildings could take a share of the blame. Only one disagreed that parents were being unnecessarily scared about safety issues -- the young father who was still living in a marginal neighborhood and didn't feel it was safe for his son to play outside without supervision. A sobering thought. The rest of us acknowledged that we'd not lived in areas where live gun fire was an issue. We all agreed that silly scientific reports of insignificant health risks were not worth the paper they were printed on. Most felt that media overreacted to anything even slightly dramatic. The medical student attempted to explain the Krebs citric acid cycle. Few understood. I had to leave the table. My lack of comprehension of this tiny bit of energy release chemistry brought back too many bad memories of college freshman bioscience lectures.
Two people -- the hockey player (also a chemistry student) and the retired auto mechanic -- had strong views on Global Warming theory. They both thought it was hooey. The mechanic offered some interesting technical information about fuel efficiency and emissions, saying that catalytic converters could potentially result in more, not less pollution. The hockey player let us in on some personal information about dental implants -- a topic of interest to the computer sales rep who was apparently issued two too-few adult molars in the great genetic jackpot. Since she recently graduated cum laude and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, we conjectured that missing adult molars might be an evolutionary sign of increased intelligence.
Which brought us all to cause and effect and The Genome Project and health risks. The Latin American scholar, an older man, quite gentle and quiet, proposed a toast to cultural and genetic diversity -- a celebration of idiosyncratic independence from arbitrarily imposed definitions of what constitutes good health or a Good Life.
We all drank to that. And to the fact that our similarities vastly outnumbered our differences.
Happy Idiosyncratic Independence Day.
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