My adventures in fourth grade: Every year there is a project put on by our Pediatrics Club called Tar Wars which aims to educate kids on the negative side effects of cigarettes. I got all dressed up in professional dress and white coat and trekked on over to the elementary school this morning. My classmate Katie and I were assigned a class of 25 fourth graders who were all too willing to share their stories about the people they knew that smoked and how awful they were. We of course tried to tell them that cigarettes don't make people bad but were then posed with "well then why do bad guys always smoke in movies?" Touché kids, touché. We went through the statistics (did you know 26% of 10th graders in the US smoke????), asked them what tobacco can do to your body, and had them run in place and then breathing through a straw to emulate how chronic smoking restricts your ability to breath. Hopefully all the questions and sharing they were doing meant they were having a good time. Before we left we asked them if they thought they would ever smoke and we got an emphatic "no" so I'm going to try to think positively and be in my own delusional world for a while that we made a difference and that disgusting statistic won't be as high for them when they are in 10th grade (definitely delusional because I'd be willing to bet around here that it is an even higher percentage- gross!!!).
-Side funny note: I got hit on by one of the boys. (uh...go me I guess?) He asked me where I worked and how I got so smart about all this stuff. When I told him it was because I was getting old and acquired all this knowledge, he looked at me and said that I was probably only 6 or 7 years older than him. I tried to contain my laughter and said that was very sweet. He then responded with "yeah, my step dad taught me how to pick up girls. You always tell them they look younger than they actually are." Oh kids.
This is what matters. I want to try to positively effect people's health. Hopefully at least one of those kids will remember me saying that rat poison has been found as an additive of cigarettes and that will keep them from ever picking up a cigarette. Some people might argue that this was a waste of time and that a 30 minute pitch won't do any good but if we don't try then how will we know? I got to do what I love today and want to do for the rest of my life: promote health in kids. Adults are important too but my focus is to build a foundation of health in kids that will start them on the right foot as an adult. I needed this reminder and chance to practice even for 30 short minutes my future goal.
Four year old me: As I was going over the lesson plan last night, one of my favorite memories about the silly things I did in my childhood came back to me. I remember it vividly too. We were living in Dixon, MO where my dad was stationed. It was one of those places that I would go over to our neighbor's house without telling my mom where I was going and she didn't have to worry about me. I was pretty independent (family reading this right now are probably uttering sounds of agreement). The family next door had two teenage boys that put up with me and I would wonder over there and climb up on their skateboard ramps for hours. One summer day, I was making my way over to hang out with the boys when I saw their mom Linda outside smoking. I loved Linda. It was the 80's when all those Surgeon General warnings about cigarettes were on tv and I guess even as a four year old I took notice. Well I marched right up to her and told her that I wasn't coming to her funeral when she died from smoking and ran back to my house and slammed the door. She subsequently quit smoking within two months and by the time we moved a year later she had gotten her husband to quit. We used to get Christmas letters from them after we moved that would always have a message to tell me she still wasn't smoking. I was born to be a health care provider.
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