Now I love NPR, but wouldn’t this have been a wonderful opportunity for them to expose some perspective? Like how, just a generation ago, practically everybody got measles, that it was treatable, and that it was understood to be a part of growing up – after which we’d be immune? Almost every kid I knew growing up got measles at some point, and none of them died or suffered permanent damage from it. Now it’s true that I grew up in a very small town, but still. It’s embarrassing to look back and remember that our elders considered our generation “soft” and “pampered” because we didn’t have to live through the depression and the war.

Of anxiety-induced heart conditions.