In our house the movie A Christmas Story is, as in many other households, a holiday staple.

In this perfect little movie, Ralphie has several loss-of-youthful-innocence moments. One of the most poignant (mild spoiler alert follows if for some reason you’ve never seen this movie!) is his effort to decode a message to save radio show heroine Little Orphan Annie.

Ralphie has eagerly awaited a special decoder pin’s arrival in the mail. He’ll tune into his favorite radio program, receive Annie’s coded message, and then use the decoder. This is important stuff!

He finally receives the decoder package (making him forget immediately about a narrow escape from bullies), hears the message, and rushes off to the bathroom, “the only room in the house where a boy of nine can sit in privacy and decode.”

While little brother Randy whines at the door about needing to use the bathroom, the narrator recounts Ralphie’s decoding. The tension builds as he deciphers Annie’s message, letter by letter, imagining he might be saving the world!

That’s until the whole message is clear: B-E-S-U-R-E-T-O-D-R-I-N-K-Y-O-U-R-O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E.

A stunned Ralphie realizes he’s been duped: The message was merely “a crummy commercial” for the program sponsor. Ralphie throws down the pencil and decoder and leaves the bathroom, going “out to face the world again, wiser.”

It’s another bittersweet moment where he is yanked into the sphere of mature knowledge.

For some chunk of Americans, their Ralphie-Ovaltine moment is coming. I don’t think it’s funny. I’m not gloating about it. I don’t envy them it.

At some point, these Ralphies will be engaged, perhaps feverishly, with recollecting a lingering aspect of the chaos of the past four years of this president, and it’ll hit them.

Perhaps it will be when one of the many inside stories of a presidency driven by selfishness and greed and antagonism comes to light. They will hear about just who walked and tarnished the halls of their White House the past few years. They will see clearly the pardoning of those who abused their trust.

Perhaps, my god, they sent money the past few months to “fight” the bizarre claims of election conspiracy. They will see how a purported-drainer-of-the-swamp created the deepest fen in modern political history with their money.

Perhaps they’ll read a book about autocratic or fascist propaganda. Or they’ll read–or re-read–1984. They’ll realize that the person who hugs the flag tightest may be the least patriotic, the least American. They will see that a long and unfortunately reliable way to fool people is with what many call “The Big Lie,” which is that if you tell a monster lie, a preposterous untruth, and repeat it enough, some group of people will come to believe it.

Perhaps they will not have their moment for many years. Perhaps it will come when their kids or even grandkids will read about this era, read about how a purveyor of more than 20,000 lies set up a sloppy, stupid lie about the integrity of the U.S. election and how many enablers went along with it to get votes, and a young face will look up to them asking, “You certainly didn’t believe that, did you?”

Faced with that question, what will our Ralphies do when they think back on the unpatriotic and undemocratic actions of the past four years? Will they admit their culpability?

Or, even with so much time having passed, will they follow dutifully from the wreckage of integrity of the past four years and simply lie themselves?

Regardless, I feel for these future Ralphies, as many will have a moment when their belief in a movement will be abruptly shattered, splintered by the searing shock of knowledge that the past four years had been largely a sham: a bloated, “crummy” commercial.

Tags: politics & government, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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In the spring, as we were whiling away pandemic time, I decided to attempt to rekindle my short-lived TikTok fame by making a video about badminton.

Yeah, let that sentence sink in.

Unfortunately, in trying to please my small and ever-dwindling fan base, I stumbled in a rut and tore the meniscus in my knee.

Some fun.

I hobbled around for five months before determining that I had to address it. The surgery is tomorrow.

With that decision, I entered the insurance maze. Realize, no one was a malicious player–in fact, everyone I worked with was friendly and helpful–but the process was like a part-time job.

Once upon a time, I went to my primary care because that’s where the process all starts for these things. That makes sense. Got it. From there, I needed an MRI. Check. Then I was off to see the knee specialist.

I have good, maybe great, insurance. I work for an employer that has a preferred network. I searched the nearly 24,000-line tier 1 provider spreadsheet for a knee doc, and I found one.

I went to the office, got some x-rays and had an eval. He sent me to the surgeon. I went to see the surgeon and the NP he works with, had a more detailed eval (like I said, the individual players were great), and set up the surgery.

During the course of all this bills and paper copy EoB (explanation of benefits) forms were arriving. Sometimes I was billed. Sometimes I wasn’t. Sometimes I paid on the spot. Sometimes I didn’t. I tried to keep up, matching EoBs (they can be a bit confusing) with bills. I was also trying to leverage the waning dollars in my health care spending account–see, I’m a smart consumer!

The big day crept closer.

I of course needed a CoVID preop test. I also needed to set up postop rehab. I looked through my big spreadsheet and found a tier 1 rehab provider. When I called, though, I was told they are not “capitated” to my primary care, so, as a super helpful person there helped me sort that out–including by making a phone call to my insurance for me–I can’t go there.

I called a “capitated” rehab center. I can go there, even though it’s more expensive than the other place. Another nice person gave me a mystery number I had to provide to my primary care, which I did. I called back the primary care to give them that number for a referral.

I was feeling I was almost over the finish line, but near the end of my call about the rehab referral it was mentioned that I might need a “clearance” or “referral” for the surgery. I went from befuddled to panicked, because I thought we did that from the get-go, and then I realized I didn’t know what “that” meant! What were these terms?!

I scrambled to connect my fine primary care folks and the helpful surgeon’s assistant. There was a moment of concern, but they took care of it.

Apparently I am ready, although during the course of those conversations and the conversation with the rehab place I was also told I need a “script,” and I was initially befuddled again until I was assured the “script” would be sent out with me following surgery.

I’m an organized guy. I have a folder for all this stuff. Nice notes. A filing system powerfully behind it all.

How do other people deal with all of this, I thought? Or, wait… am I other people? Pride, indeed, cometh before the fall.

Anyway, I’m ready for the big day–I think.

But this is more complicated now. CoVID. I have to think about the implications of going to the hospital. I also have to think about the implications of asking health care providers to do this job when they might be doing other jobs.

I’m at the eve of the event (who knew this would be the biggest “eve” of the month for me?). If something prevents the procedure, I’ll realize there are more important things in the world. I’ll wait, and then re-open up my little file system and figure out where we left off.

Tags: health & medical, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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I have again wrenched myself into the 21st century. Last year I did it through TikTok. This year, Venmo.

This Venmo thing took a big leap of technofaith, since I had only recently started depositing checks electronically. I was driving to the bank with paper checks in my leather wallet–I know, I know: it was, as the kids say, ridiculous. It was time to get modern.

I signed up for Venmo. Not long after, someone wanted to give me money. I told them my Venmo userid. And they did! Look at me, exchanging money online–whee!

Now if you are a late teen or 20-something, the rest of this will no doubt strike you in a “Wow that dude’s old” kind of way. You’ve been warned. But that’s where the story is.

So one day I open my Venmo (is “open my” the proper phrasing?) and look around, and I notice that I can see that Jimmy gave Jenny “$20 for drinkies.” Jeffy paid Jilly and there’s a French fries emoji. Somebody paid somebody for “Sticky Buns.” Serena paid Virgil accompanied by a GIF of a fingernail getting painted.

On and on. I was stupefied: What was I seeing? I’ll tell you, uh, whipper-snappers what I thought I was seeing: The intimate financial transactions of people, many of them strangers.

My befuddlement led me to what I thought was a good question: Why would people want other people to know how they spend their money?

I posed this very question to many of these people and others like them. The general response I believe can be summarized succinctly: “Who cares?” Not only did they not care, but few could even understand why it mattered.

If I thought this was weird, people said (sometimes stifling a yawn), I could simply make my own transactions private (ah–I had already done that!). But what was the difference?

This behavior was outside my sphere of understanding. In my world paradigm, financial transactions are private. They shouldn’t be social. They shouldn’t be media. Especially when it is easy for them not to be.

However, as I scrolled through the endless transaction list of pizzas and drinks and articles of clothing and drinks and tickets and drinks, money eagerly exchanging hands, I wondered if my perception was what needed changing.

Doubt crept in. Why should these things be private? In real life (IRL), wouldn’t I have seen these people in public with their drinkies and pizzas and other stuff, handing money to another person?

What’s the difference if I’m seeing it all secret-like on my phone? Who does care, and, in our digital world, what does it ultimately matter?

Tags: ends & odd, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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