Watch what’s given to you and watch what you take.
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My youngest son has allergies, and I do mean, allergies. This boy is allergic to everything under the sun: Grass, trees, dust mites, shellfish. You name it, he has to abstain from it.
When he was just a baby, perhaps, a little over a year, his skin would break out for many different reasons. For quite some time, his mother and I couldn’t figure it out. Finally, we decided to go to the hospital.
Coal miners would take canaries with them down into the mine tunnels and if there was dangerous gases, it would kill the canaries first.
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I was never a fan of these institutions. I felt like they were always using our people for experiments. My Daddy always told me, “Don’t be nobody’s canary.” I never knew what he meant by that until I had children of my own. So, I kept the visits to a minimum. If it wasn’t broke, there wasn’t a need for the hospital. Runny nose? Robitussin. Chest cold? Vick’s rub. Sprained ankle? Ace bandage. Not even that was cause for a visit.
So, when it came to my kids, the influence to dodge the doc was already deeply rooted. My Daddy was against vaccinations. He always thought that the government was trying to pull another ‘Tuskegee Experiment.’
‘A what, Dad?’
Come on. I had no idea what this man meant. I had absolutely no knowledge at all of a ‘Tuskegee Experiment.’ Heck, I didn’t even know what Tuskegee was. I was seven, I thought it had something to do with the ivory in elephant tusks. I had seen that on channel 2 one day.
I started to be more mindful of those in positions of power over my health.
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Now, let’s fast forward twenty years. I’m in community college and it’s an Afro-American history class. The professor’s lecture is about The Tuskegee Experiment. The professor taught us how the government used black men as Guinea pigs while learning about a venereal disease. They promised these men free health care and what not. However, they only deceived these me, to their faces. Empty promises that were full of bull.
That’s the main reason why I felt the way I felt about hospitals. Take a good look at the symbol doctors worldwide wear. A pin with two snakes wrapped around it. Really? This is a person I should trust with my son’s life and/or healthcare? I don’t think so. My Daddy was on to something. He didn’t quite know what, but he knew something.
I decided at that very moment, to play a bigger part in the decision making of my own family’s health.
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There’s a story of a mad scientist named Yacub, who taught his doctors and nurses to make this one decision at the birth of every child. Destroy the alike and save the unalike. In other words, kill all the black babies and save all the brown babies. In by doing so, he created a form of birth control designed to help breed the nation he desired. The nurses would take the black babies at birth and stick them in the head with a pin. There’s that symbol again.
After studying this story, I started to be more mindful of those in positions of power over my health. I decided at that very moment to play a bigger part in the decision making of my own family’s health.
So, vaccinations were out for me and my family. I decided that we were going to be healthy the natural way. Long before all these medications, people lived to be hundreds of years old. Let’s try some of that.
My Daddy used to always say to me. “Don’t be nobody’s canary, boy.”
Now, if I have never listened to my Daddy, I learned a valuable lesson through canaries. Watch what’s given to you and watch what you take.
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For years, I wondered what the heck does that mean. Until, one day in my teens, my Daddy sat me down and told me a story about coal miners. See, canary was the subject of the allusion, the canary in the coal mine. Coal miners would take canaries with them down into the mine tunnels. If there was dangerous gases, it would kill the canaries first. This gave the miners warning to retreat immediately.
Therefore, being a canary meant being the Guinea pig to the government’s experiments. They try the medications out on the masses before administering them to the ones they wish to save. Sometimes, this is done at free blood drives, free flu shots, and etcetera.
Now, if I have never listened to my Daddy, I learned a valuable lesson through canaries. Watch what’s given to you and watch what you take.
I won’t be nobody’s canary, Daddy.
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Photo: Getty Images