<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>Diane:<\/strong> I worked at the medical unit at the embassy in London, sort of the primary care physician’s office for the diplomats of Europe and western Africa. And let me tell you, Ritalin was doled out to kids like fluoride tabs. “He’s fidgety in school, doesn’t focus.” Ritalin for you! I mean, little boys aren’t naturally designed to sit still in school, are they? Camille Paglia talks about this, only she’s talking about hormone-addled teenagers.<\/p>\nI commend you on not jumping on the medicate-your-babies bandwagon. That’s where it starts: teach your kids to work through difficult situations, or teach them to pop a pill to do the work for you. Another primarily American cultural feature that is hurting us. Pills get you through tough times, since we are lacking those other things that prop people up in other cultures. This whole mindset is part of that Bigger Picture problem.<\/p>\n
Paul:<\/strong> Really, all I want right now is for both sides to be reasonable and discuss it like it’s a real, tangible problem, because it is. Whatever comes out of it will take time, I realize that. But everything’s got to be on the table and up for review. And it would certainly help if people stopped making up “facts” like “baseball bats kill more people than guns.” Research. Do your research folks.<\/p>\nDiane:<\/strong> I want both sides to be reasonable and discuss,\u00a0without<\/em> the shadow of the NRA and special interest groups clouding things. Do you think that’s possible, Mr. Pearson?<\/p>\nPaul:<\/strong> Sure, it’s possible. This is America, anything’s possible. We just have to get over the requirement that it be sponsored. And maybe we should have more of these discussions in living rooms and coffee shops, not just on TV.
\n
\n<\/strong>Diane:<\/strong> And definitely not just on Facebook!<\/p>\nPaul:<\/strong> Yes! Let’s move this to Reddit!<\/p>\nDiane:<\/strong> And that’s a wrap!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seattleite Paul Pearson and San Franciscan\u00a0Diane Karagienakos and\u00a0 are the consummate online friends. They have never met in person blew the mystique and finally met in person last November. If not for their mutual connection to exactly two people, they might not have ever known of each other\u2019s existence. But they instant-message each other with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[481,484,474,480,475,482,479,483],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myadultland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myadultland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myadultland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myadultland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myadultland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1923"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/myadultland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1947,"href":"https:\/\/myadultland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions\/1947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myadultland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myadultland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myadultland.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}