2004-04-23 - 11:17 a.m.
(Patriots Day is a state holiday in Massachusetts. I think it commemorates the Battle of Lexington and Concord or something, but really it exists so they can hold the Boston Marathon that day. In any event, most offices are closed.)
A few years ago on Patriots Day, my roommate and I went to see the movie Ice Age. (My roommate was male but we got over the possible implications of going to a cutesy, animated children�s film together.) Basically, a John Leguizamo-voiced Paleolithic sloth and an Everybody Loves Raymond-voiced mastodon find a lost human baby and try to return it to its tribe. They meet up with Dennis Leary�s saber-toothed tiger, who is initially tempted to sic his pack on the baby as revenge on the humans, but eventually has a change of heart. You know the drill. Comedy ensues.
Halfway through, I found myself blinking back tears. How embarrassing. Could I get more girly?
I was thinking about my role in the Ice Age. I couldn�t imagine being much use. I know there must have been other people then with multiple sclerosis, but what good would we have been hauling firewood or hunting for mammoths? I was thinking about the saber-toothed tigers. They could have run me down; I would have been toast.
Then it occurred to me: there are no more saber-toothed tigers. They couldn�t cope with the changing climate and territory. Our tribe learned to hold them off over time, with spears and torches and atlatls and group coordination and remembering which tactics worked and which didn�t. Over time, the tigers didn�t stand a chance. Today, we get the day off from office jobs to watch digitally animated movies in climate-controlled theaters. They�re extinct.
I�m no Pollyanna; I don�t expect the cavalry to save me. There is a great deal of very basic medical research on M.S. that has not been done. Seemingly simple things about progression and causality aren�t really understood. But today, there are several drugs to treat the condition. Ten years ago there were none. Over time, our tribe learns more about our bodies and about what goes wrong, develops pharmaceuticals and studies broader populations. Over time, what can possibly compete?
My role in this is indirect. I have always loved cities, our camps. I will make them better homes, make us better people in a better environment. We do not cower in caves, away from the dangers of the world outside. We must not be a danger to ourselves, poisoning or killing ourselves. We are not animals.
There must have been a last person ever to be mauled by a saber-toothed tiger. Of course, they couldn�t have known it, bleeding out on the tundra, but I think they might have felt better if they had.
� 2004 Geoff Gladstone
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