Laughable adults
Some people read only Facebook. Overnight, they become lit critics.
Dear friends,
As one is sick, one seeks for easy-to-digest things.
It’s either a bowl of chicken congee, a cup of herbal tea or some brainless reels.
I was hospitalized on the hottest day in my hometown in nearly half a decade. The real temperature was 43 degrees Celsius but felt like 48 – a literal inferno on earth.
I was hallucinating due to dehydration despite the fact that roughly 4 liters of liquid – still water, electrolyte water, tonic water and juice – was indulged unconsciously over the course of one day.
When you’re sick, you will get countless advice on how to get better which, most of the time, makes just little sense.
Mom asked me to sit up or at least open my eyes in order to “build resilience”.
“Don’t sleep too much or you will dream twisted dreams again,” she said without any scientific backup.
As I crawled to grab my MacBook, she refined her statement in order to ensure I got what she meant.
“Mom tells you to open your eyes, not watching things. I thought you planned to stay away from your devices the entire holiday?”
“Yes, but it would be only when I had other activities to be occupied with, not stuck in bed with viral fever,” I replied to her in my head as the throat was too sore to vent any words out.
Instead, I plugged the earbuds in and started watching Sex and The City on Netflix. The binge only stopped when my eyes were flooded with tears (not me being emotional, it was just the fever) and my body temperature was about to reach 40 degrees, hence, parents decided to have professionals take care of my health.
In the wait for IV fluids to be administered into my vein, I continued doom scrolling with just one hand and stuffing my lowly tolerant mind with random short-form videos.
Those snippets made me laugh for a good couple of seconds before being wiped out.
I can’t help thinking of the relation between my poor health status and the bad taste content consumption. We opt for something digestible, laughable because we’re not built for something different, more complicated. Don’t you think?
And instead of admitting that we’re not ready or strong enough for something mentally, intellectually demanding, we dismantle it by the force of the crowd?
A parent of an 11th grader of the International School HCMC – one of the country’s most privileged K-12 institutes – flared up in anger after reading Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous that a literature teacher assigned to their child.
The post was shared in the school’s parents forum with an excerpt illustrating a gay couple’s sexual acts. Vuong’s work was even called a “pornographic novel” and ridiculed for depicting queer love.
Under the original report on VNExpress, a lot of readers explained why they thought the book was not suitable for being taught at school, for “normal students”.
“Homosexuality (despite being understood and sympathized by the society) is too deviating to be included in our education system,” wrote a reader nicknamed Anonymous V.
Is our education system going through an identity crisis? For such a long time, what we’ve learned at school has been patriotic prose – we kill enemies and win, they invade our land and lose. It has not prepared us to consume any ideas more complex than that – the contemplation of others, the tolerance for differences.
Regarding the parent who got triggered by Vuong’s novel and the self-righteous crowd who called themselves progressive for understanding queerness but still unable to support it, that might not be wild to guess they were once the products of this very sickening education.
I wonder how the student has been.
Till next time,
T.
P/S: No top picks this week since I’m still so much in pain. Please drop something you think I might like (I will!)
