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Writers Corner |
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Private I
The second experience I did not have enough space to tell ye about last week happened during one of my most favorite activities in the whole world - shopping - NOT!
After spending a fortune buying brand names for my girls, I always look for racks that have 70 per cent or so off so that I can get myself a few bargains. Having just picked up, but not yet checked in, two pairs of jeans at $85 each, I spied a loaded rack outside the door of this store. I sauntered out with the jeans slung over my arm, and just as I reached the rack - BOOM - beepers started going off all around me.
Suddenly a young fellow in some kind of a uniform grabbed the jeans from my arm and a saucy looking young miss started "patting me down",
She hauled my two, poor, old arthritic arms right up in the air - almost out of socket. The pain gave me the courage to get saucy right back and in front of an interested, amused crowd that had gathered, I shouted: "What's wrong with ye all - I only wanted to buy something off your bloody, old rack and get it all checked in at the one time - keep your old jeans, and move your ugly, old junk rack back in the store so ye won't beep someone else into a near heart attack."
I can tell you, I never set my tidy little foot in that store again. Now what I really want to talk about this week is privacy and your right to it. Some of us can recall when we were identified by our name - that soft, sweet sound that proclaims a person a unique somebody.
Today, we are known by harsh-sounding, impersonal numbers- PIN, SIN, STU, POB, PLA etc. etc. etc. Some of the numbers are simple, but some of them are unreal - 000001 230000004560000789-nf-OOOO-K. I suppose they make sense to someone.
The "numbers" business, I am told, can invade privacy like nothing else on this earth. Imagine! My thoughts then led me back to the days of my youth and I tried to get a comparison of privacy: - then and now.
The first invasion, if you can call it that, that I remember, happened when the school nurse came into the classroom to check us out. Well, we all lined up, three or more classes together, and she looked down our throats, in our ears and over all visible flesh for signs of the "itch". Then came the hated part - using two little things like toothpicks, she looked through our heads for what we called "boos"...lice.
As you turned slowly around, suddenly face to face with your classmates, some of whom were trying to make you laugh, you prayed that you did not get the envelope. If you got that, you had 'em - the "boos". You were sent home for a week, turbaned, shaved almost bald, with foul-smelling stuff in your head. We used to go out in the yard, sit on our only lawn chair, the woodhorse wait for the 'boo annihilation".
Once, when my brother was told by the nurse his head was clean, he said: "That's because my mother killed 'em all with the LIFTER this morning!" Everybody in town knew who had "boos' and who didn't. Not much privacy, right.
Well, I want to compare it with going to one of the larger hospitals today for an X-Ray. It's not so bad sitting in the first waiting room with all your clothes on. But when you are called to the last waiting room and you sit with men and women all decked out in the colored jobbies, it's not so private. I always manage to put that darn outfit on backwards.
Another experience from the good old days - how much privacy is there when marks were announced from the teacher's desk and church dues were called out from the pulpit - "Mr./Mrs. so and So- $5, Mr./Mrs. So and So, $2, Mr. X, nothing - never did, never will!". Not much privacy, right.
But what about when you compare it to computer hackers today. I am told if they can get just one number that identifies you, they can find out just about everything about you.
And, you take public building today, where you may find it necessary to do some private business. Do you really believe those dividers guarantee you privacy?
At least, while standing up in front of the nurse and your classmates, you only had your head "looked at" from the outside. These days it seems you can have your house, your head and your soul "looked at" without even knowing it. Wicked, isn't it?
Catherine Kelly
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