My wife had sent me to Walmart with a coupon for a specific pregnancy test, and that’s where I met “Stu.” He was a college freshman - sophomore tops - and I still believe he was about to get laid for the first time.
Condoms are stacked next to pregnancy tests, and the giveaway was Stu’s look as he looked over his choices: What do all these varieties mean? Which is the right one?
He stared hard at the plethora of prophylactic possibilities like my friend Andy stares at the Taco Bell menu: There are so many choices I don’t know what to order.
Stu’s other tell was how he stepped back whenever someone walked by. His face was close to the dangling boxes till he’d notice another shopper and step way back, pretending to look for something else.
But Stu couldn’t look away with me right there. So he stepped halfway back and tried avoiding eye contact with the little boxes that said he was playing it safe while I looked for the little box that said we skipped that step.
I found the proper test and headed to the registers as Stu re-engaged his search. Then I turned around, held up the pregnancy test, and said, “Hey dude… choose wisely, cuz the side effect of you screwing up with those means you’ll be back for one of these.”
***
I’ve been out of sync the last few weeks because of new, desperately needed prescription meds. But the side effects have kept me out of the loop: fatigue, Spielberg-level cinematic dreams, sweating, and constipation… there’s never just one side effect. All these downsides for the one upside.
Officially “mid-life,” I now take more pills than just my Flintstone’s vitamin in the mornings. I stroll the pharmacy aisle looking for products my parents used to buy, the kind advertised during the Nightly News to a specific “mature” demographic.
What gets me in those adverts are the lists of side effects: Nausea? Okay. Rash? I can put a cream on that. Erections lasting more than four hours? Who is looking at the clock saying, “It’s only been 3 hours and 45 minutes… things have gotta settle down soon! Right?”
The ads encourage us that side effects are rare and usually mild, and only a few people suffer the worst options. But still, considering all the downsides for the one upside, it's like a game of Pharma Roulette.
Like for me, the medication that calms the emotions of my past also kills the erections of my present. Am I willing to live with the side effects? Is it worth the downsides for the one upside?
Side effects are unavoidable, regardless of intention. If we zoom out, how do we reconcile side effects that “bless” one while they “curse” another? Like how a farmer’s drought-ending rain is another’s home-destroying floods? Or how one country’s fortune is at the expense of another country’s treasure?
I dunno how we do it. Take the election: Serious side effects of your vote may be saving democracy as we know it. Is it worth the downsides for the one upside?
“Choose wisely,” I told Stu, and he let out a nervous, squeaky, puberty-ish laugh.
Aren't we all right now?
Godspeed,
O
URANUS XL RADIO ADVERT: