☆

No matter how injured. If a parent doesn't deem it necessary to see a doctor, it doesn't happen. Teachers can suggest a doctor visit, but unless it's a very acute injury (and even then), it's ultimately up to the parents.

You can be 13. Twisted, maybe broken ankle. You teacher lets you sit out in PE. She's concerned, and tells you to rest when you go home, and see a doctor. You get home, ur parents fill a bath and add some Epsom salts, and then laugh at you for using it moms old colorguard stick as a cane. Take some ibuprofen they say. It's just a little sprain, ur a kid.

You go to school the next day, go to ur office assistant time. Office calls ur mom to come get you, because you're clearly in too much pain for school. Your mom laughs when she gets you, says you just were so determined not to miss school. Scolds you for making the office ladies worry.

You never see a doctor for the injury.

Your parents come into the exam room at every visit. This does not stop with age, except for gynecologist. But your parents are on the medical release forms. They fill them out for you, with you. You do not get to take them off.

You never get to tell s doctor about the ankle. Even though it never quote healed right, and it hurts every day.

Then your 18. In college. Still on your parents insurance, and have no car. The on campus clinic only does std testing. You fall down some stairs. Same injury. You call your parents, crying from the pain. You are using a mop as a cane. They console you and say to have a bath, take some meds, and let them know how it feels in a few days. You end up borrowing your roommates rolling chair to get around for the weekend.

By Monday, you can walk again. You walk miles to class every day. You ask to see a doctor, but your parents won't drive the hour to come take you, and you don't have the insurance card. You are still at their mercy for medical care. The ankle tries to heal again. This time worse than before. The tendons click with every step.

Now you're in your twenties. Finally have your own healthcare. You see a doctor. You get to mention the ankle! They say it's been too long to really even know what was damaged. That you have arthritis now. It healed wrong but it can no longer be fixed.

Ask yourself, how does this piece make you feel? (No wrong answers)

Look for an artist statement nearby. What does it say about the artist and their relationship to their work? What does the artist say that they are trying to convey with their art? What contextual clues can you pick up from what they say about their background, or what they omit?

Look at the title of the piece. What is the artist saying about their work by naming it that, either explicitly or implicitly?

Look at the medium. Is there anything about the piece that stands out to you, knowing what it's made of?

Look at the year it was made. What cultural events might have been happening around this time? Was this piece part of a particular art movement? What was the purpose of that art movement, and what was it trying to say?

Story in 3 parts.

We would regularly have guest speakers on a variety of topics - an anorexia patient, a person who’d studied abroad in the USA, a person who freestyled their further education (this was about to be abolished so not an option for us, but still an inspiring talk), a person who’d refused their military service and was instead doing community service (and why), and so on and so forth.

At one point we had a guest speaker come talk about it his work with juvenile delinquents.

He was the overseer of a house where these kids (our age! Some younger!) lived - not a prison - and where they would receive schooling to complete their mandatory primary education in a setting where social workers were on hand to assist and basically the whole point was to nurture the kids in an attempt to prevent them from choosing a life of crime and/or become dependent on the welfare system due to inability to work. They had support, teachers, people who believed in them, etc.

And yet these kids were failing. They were unruly, anxious, restless, spent their breaks smoking or going to the corner shop for soft drinks or snacks and were too wired to settle down at night to sleep so would often wind up sneaking out and causing trouble - even if the trouble was only some half asses graffiti on a bus stop .and in the morning they would be too exhausted to get up and would take half a day - until lunch, when they would be going on their corner shop lunch break - to wake up.

The problem was: these kids weren’t eating proper food. They were subsisting on nicotine, sugary snacks, and Coca Cola. So this guy, who’d heard of our school, got in touch and requested meal plans and then introduced mandatory breakfast and lunch, with dinner still optional, all following our school’s carefully designed meal plans (vegetable frontloaded with only 100g meat per person, one vegetarian day, one fish day, all bread made with whole meal flour. And since this was Denmark, dinner was a “cold table” i.e. rye bread with various topping choices, salads, and any lunch leftovers reheated as a side). And he made it mandatory for all the staff too, and assigned seating groups with a staff member (we had this at our school too), so that each meal resembled a family meal.

And suddenly these kids were having complete breakfasts with oatmeal porridge and yogurt and toast and some fruit and milk and orange juice, which gave them a solid source of energy to start the day, and they had a hot meal for lunch, and after a about a week of this dinner attendance skyrocketed. The kids weren’t restless and anxious anymore. Most of them voluntarily quit smoking and most of them stopped getting a soft drink from the corner shop too - they weren’t hungry anymore, so the sugary craving went away. These kids, just because they were getting three solid meals every day, flourished. They could concentrate in class. They were awake in the morning. They didn’t stay up late wired and restless. They all graduated and went back home and didn’t see the inside of any system, welfare or criminal, again. These kids didn’t want to be troublemakers - they just (for whatever reason) didn’t have the foundation they needed to succeed and that foundation, it turned out, was proper nutrition.