Headmaster's Thoughts: March 2021

The night after I received my first Moderna vaccine shot, I slept for nearly nine hours. There must be a correlation. I like consequences like this. In Australia, they found that eating ice cream substantially increased your chances of being bitten by a shark. In New York, the percentage of lung cancer increased for people who regularly had coffee in the mid-morning.

Of course, there is always a spoilsport around to explain these phenomena. The Australian study revealed that ice cream was usually eaten at a beach. If you go to a beach, you are more likely to swim in the sea where, unsurprisingly, your chances of a shark encounter are overwhelmingly higher than if you are walking on a street. Those sharks just do not go to Main Street. Similarly, the people leaving their workplaces for a quick cup of coffee in the morning, were really going to smoke a cigarette. And cigarettes, as we all know, cause lung cancer; hence the higher rates. Spoilsports!
 
In the case of my sleep, I knew that it was just under nine hours because my Fitbit told me. This wrist gadget is usually very pessimistic about my sleep. When I think I have slept seven hours, it tells me that I only slept five. When I think I have had deep sleep, it tells me that my sleep was not of high quality. I am not sure what that means because sleep seems to be, well, sleep. But the Fitbit is clever enough to deduce that there are different stages, and who am I to argue with a billion dollar industry of fitness trackers?
 
In the case of the night of my Moderna shot, not only did I sleep for nearly nine hours in the first time in my recorded (on Fitbit) history, but my sleep quality, for the first time too, was “excellent”. Some of us, as we get older, have a problem falling asleep. This is particularly true when we are fortunate enough (as I do when I can) to be able to take a nap in the afternoon. Clearly, we need help if we want a satisfyingly restful night, and thus the Moderna shot worked for me. What I do, going forward, is difficult to say. There is a shortage of the Moderna vaccine, so I suppose a little plug of it every night is out of the question.  Pity!
 
I also have to admit, although I am sure this has nothing to do with the issue, that I was getting tense about getting the shot because New York was running out of the vaccine. Fortunately it was available on the Saturday at my appointment time, and the fact that it was a Saturday meant that I had no appointments the following day, and did not have to set an alarm clock. But only those spoilsport “consequence” people would claim this had anything to do with my great night of sleep. It was obviously the Moderna shot. I think that after we have all received our vaccinations, which I hope happens soon, we should look at this wonderful medical cure for other disorders. I now know that it cures sleeplessness, but maybe it also works for restless leg syndrome or constipation, neither of which, I hasten to say, I suffer from.
 
Einstein looked for, and never found, the Unified Field Theory, and I am looking for the cure-all illness pill. If you believe the advertisements on television, you would think that taking their vitamin/mineral/fruit pills would solve all of your problems. I have taken them. They do not! What is it about us, as a species, that keeps us hoping to delay the inevitability of our decay? I believe that we put off this concern about our death for as long as we can. If our parents are alive (mine, sadly, are not), then we can point to them as being next on the turntable before us. Perhaps that is one of the many reasons that the death upsets us so. Good grief! We are next!
 
Before I get into concepts about our mortality and our reasons for being here, I want to solve my present day problems. I want the Moderna shot packaged neatly so that I get “excellent” sleep every night, and I never get constipated or have a restless leg. Is that too much to ask for?
 
Ronald P. Stewart
Headmaster
York Prep
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