It’s Not Good to Assume Anything

To assume is not a good thing. What I think and what you, the reader, perceive may be the same, but that is not a safe assumption. Ask Janet or Rachel in the Herald’s Classified Advertising Department about that sort of thing. For instance, someone with a house to rent that overlooks a scenic view may desire to describe it in an ad. They would assume it would be allowed to print something like, “House for rent with beautiful scenic view.”
While it sounds innocent, to a blind or visually-impaired person, what may be beautiful becomes just an abstract thought. An assumption falls flat. That’s just a small example.
Then there are those text alerts sent by the National Weather Service. “A special weather advisory has been issued for your area.” Someone assumed we, the recipients, know what that means. I do not have inkling what to do when I get such a message. No one ever told me, they simply assumed I knew what that means. Should I run and hide? Is it time to call home and bid a final farewell? Come on; don’t assume we know what such advisories mean.
Along those same lines, a couple of local police departments relayed an air quality warning June 10. It stated that on June 11, Cape May County was under a Code Orange air quality alert. Because of heat, we must assume, breathing became hazardous to our health due to air pollution. I thought about not breathing for the day, but that wouldn’t work too long. I thought about staying in bed all day, but the boss wouldn’t appreciate that. What a dilemma, and all because it’s a Code Orange day.
My heart immediately went out to those most vulnerable on such days of doom, those suffering from asthma, heart disease or lung disease, and the frail elderly. Were there no safe havens for those engendered souls? Come on, this isn’t Beijing or North Jersey or old-time Pittsburgh with steel mills belching clouds of black smoke into the air. The polluted air we were breathing just whipped across Delaware Bay or from a few thousand miles off the Atlantic Ocean. Again, it’s not wise to assume we know what difference is a Code Orange from a Code Gray or a Code Violet or Code Mustard Yellow.
The last “code” with a color attached I knew was a Code Blue. That means take the homeless off the street when the temperatures dip below 32 and 25 degrees. After that, my “color code” description catalog went dead.
At the end of the police warnings was a website address, www.airnow.gov.
Seeking to know if we all were in mortal danger, breathing orange air, I attempted to reach that website, three times, to no avail. Each time my computer displayed a sorrowful face and said it could not find the website.
Gosh! What to do? I still haven’t updated my will. There are still people from whom I must beg forgiveness. Would my time soon end on this Code Orange day? What if someone was color blind and orange was merely a shade of gray?
I recalled days in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks when the federal government would issue colored “threat” levels? Few knew what those levels meant, except for those who worked with them daily. So what good were they? Just as good as those colorful air quality warnings were last week.
There is a great degree of assumption elsewhere in society. While we don’t watch many television shows, some of the ads puzzle me. While I’m not in the advertising side of the house, I know that an ad without a clear message wastes money.
Although I would claim to be a “limited” viewer of TV land, it’s puzzling to me that pharmaceutical firms spend zillions of dollars peddling ads for prescription drugs for illnesses most never knew existed. The assumption that Al Campbell would confront his physician and advise him or her to write a prescription for something seen on TV is utter nonsense. If I were the physician, and my patient told me they wanted a pill that had more consonants than vowels for an illness they imagined, frankly, I would pull their medical record, hand it to them and bid them a friendly “Aloha!”
Assuming that I know my condition and what wonder drugs will do is fiddling with fire, pure and simple. Oh, for the days when all we had to suffer on the airwaves were ads for cereal and shampoo, cars and razor blades. Now we face a daily barrage of straight-faced clinical advice about erectile dysfunction, constipation and drugs to slow the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, and ease depression, vaginal dryness and yeast infections, all in prime time when the entire family is present. Is there no escape from this stuff?
All this under the assumption we have the gall to say, “Doc, shut up! I know what ails me, just give me that prescription pad and write what I tell you.”
It’s really a bad move to assume anything, from the spelling of a seemingly simple name to self-medication. The only thing safe to assume, as our Amish friends tell it, “We get too soon old, and too late smart.”