As I clean up the water that has leaked in to all my dry stuff in the pantry, thanks to the man's wise decision to put an iron filled with water and a humidifier on the pantry's top shelf, I recalled an amazing image from last week.
I was flicking through the stack of old National Geographic magazines that I
I couldn't scan the picture but found some similar ones online.
Do they know about autism in Ulan Bataar?
What would the Mongolian nomadic people do if they had an autistic in their midst? Maybe the family would spend all they had on some Shaman priest who would try to cure their child.
They'd still be better off than us.
Why couldn't I have been a Mongolian herd woman? I would have a killer bod from climbing on those snowy mountains in sandals and I wouldn't even care. My yak milking and camp setting skills would be the talk of the village. I would be able to set up camp within minutes in blistering snow storms and cook up some mouth watering concoction of ox meat and flat bread. The man would be out there somewhere helping the less able herd-people cross the last treacherous mountain pass. I would not know if he would be coming back and if he did, would he have all his limbs still attached? My healthy, fat,rosy cheeked children and I would not know, as we sat in our warm ger drinking hot yak milk.
Instead I am here, in this crumbling high rise, married to a geek, surrounded by more lazy geeks. Here the highlight of every one's life is Kim Kardashian's ass, the latest i-something, tax returns and the latest quip on Greys Anatomy, or Glee or whatever. I am a fragile, wheezing shadow of a human being who thinks running 6 miles in the morning is work.
Why couldn't I be her? Look at her! Why couldn't I have grown up carefree with a cute little friend with pigtails who would ride with me?
Today I will choose to sulk about this.
Seriously those girls look fierce.
ReplyDeletebecause we always want what we dont have....because objects far away always shimmer better...and that is why they would want what you have, to live under a solid roof and never to care about getting cold when it is winter...we will always want what we dont have and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it and this is so patehtic...
ReplyDeletelets ask the mongolians...I heard they think quite lowly of the westerner - thats what the article would have me believe anyway. Some guy from Kentucky (with the national geo) spend time with them when they did their migrations...and they didnt think he was capable of much...it was interesting. If you saw the way I spend my days you would probably beleive I really do want to be on a snowy mountain or in some ditch. Cold. But living without fear of the world.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure being a Mongolian would kill me! Definitely too much of a lazy geek for that!
ReplyDeleteHowever, I will say that I have never seen Grey's Anatomy nor Glee. We have lived seven of the past nine years without programmed television (we had two-year lapse but recovered our wits a year ago). My cell phone costs ten bucks a month and is so low tech, none of the nieces and nephews want to play with it. The most exercise I get is walking my dog for an hour every day and then I plug in my MP3 and listen to a good book from librivox. I like being clueless of pop culture.