The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

It’s not uncommon down here on the South End to be at the leading edge of the breaking wave. So far ahead, actually, that those trailing behind misunderstand us. And of course misunderstanding leads to mistrust and mistrust leads to avoidance and avoidance leads to contempt and contempt leads to fear and fear leads to hatred. We artists understand this implicitly. Or at least we like to say that is why our work is reviewed with such negative criticism. We’re just ahead of the Curve. We’re misunderstood. We’re too sensitive for this world.

Just recently the Institute of Medicine called for a review of a malady we South Enders have lived with most of our lives, one that heretofore was considered, not a disease, but a psychosomatic condition. Those who have never known its symptoms easily viewed us as whiners and misfits, slaggards and sloths. We were treated as psychological lepers, shunned by our newly arrived neighbors and subjected to their silent scorn, just as those with depression and anxiety were once similarly abused before science substantiated the underlying root cause. We suffered silently, secure in the knowledge that we were victims of a disease little understood or studied by the medical community.

Until now. What previously was diagnosed by our decidedly non-medical neighbors to the north as chronic laziness or chronic fatigue syndrome has now been deemed a true physiologic pathology deserving of a proper name: Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease (SEID), a crippling affliction most of my buddies and me have lived with for years with little sympathy from our mizzuses. Well, guess who’s going to have to apologize now, eh, little Miss Critical?? And, with a kinder gentler healthcare system in place, maybe now we can get the care and treatment we need … and even a sizeable disability check to help us cope with our difficult lives.

So next time you see a South Ender balking at work or employment, maybe you’ll show a bit of compassion. All I can say is you better hope this isn’t contagious.

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