Free hugs: better than donuts?

All I can say is: those donuts got me through some tough times.

When my sister was at death’s door for three solid weeks, and my brother and I spent all day, every day, at the Coronary Intensive Care Unit, sleeping there every night in a chair beside her or on a pullout couch in the family room; when my mother had open-heart surgery – twice – and we waited, anxiously and for hours, in the waiting room, for word; when my mother lived for months in transitional care waiting for a nursing home bed; and when, finally, my mother died at the Infirmary, after years of battling congestive heart failure. In between, there were emergency room visits too numerous to mention, surgeries too numerous to count, and appointments, x-rays, ultrasounds and CT scans too routine to recall.

Suffice to say, I have spent a lot of time roaming the halls of the QEII Health Sciences Centre, and a lot of those hours were well outside of typical “visiting hours.”

It’s not that you get hungry when you’re there, really. But you want comfort, a change of scene, an escape from whatever oppressive reality you’re facing at that particular moment. And sometimes, a trip downstairs (or upstairs, if you’re in Emerg) for a sweet, sugary donut and a hot cup of coffee is really about the only pleasure conceivable, and frankly, available, within the realm of that reality.

But that small respite, or part of it, is soon to be available no more on hospital property. Once October comes, Tim Hortons outlets on the properties of Capital Health will remove all food items that don’t meet Capital Health’s “healthy food” guidelines. That means that donuts, croissants and cinnamon buns will be out, and low-fat muffins and bagels will be in.

It’s a symbolic gesture; I understand that. Health care providers can hardly preach healthy lifestyles and simultaneously sell unhealthy food without appearing to contradict themselves.

The thing is, at the Infirmary, the cafeteria closes nightly at 7 pm. After that, until about one in the morning, Tim’s – and a couple of pricey vending machines – is pretty much all you’ve got.

I will admit that I am an emotional eater. But if ever there was a time and place for emotional eating, a dark and largely deserted hospital corridor at midnight is pretty much a justifiable time and a logical place to engage in the practice.

Plus, let’s look at the real numbers, here. A trip to the Tim Hortons website will tell you that, in terms of baked goods, the worst offender on the Tim’s menu is a Walnut Crunch. At 360 calories and 23 grams of fat, it’s roughly equivalent to snacking on a McDonalds double cheeseburger (430 calories and 22 grams of fat).

But not every sweet treat is quite that bad. A soon-to-be-forbidden Boston Cream donut has 250 calories and 8 grams of fat; not really that egregious, even when compared to a sanctioned sesame-seed bagel: 270 calories and 2.5 grams of fat. Will cream cheese be available or verboten? If it’s allowed, adding a bit of plain cream cheese to that bagel will add 144 calories and 14 grams of fat.

Banning donuts is all about optics, but, admittedly, optics do matter – especially in the context of food and health care. I just think that if administrators want remove a significant source of symbolic comfort in the hospital, maybe they should be obliged to replace it with something equally comforting. How about $1.50 massages and a “free hugs” kiosk?

Bullies bad, your kid good

When I was about 10 years old, my family moved from a military base in Ontario to a working-class subdivision in Saint John, N.B. It was the first time I had ever lived off a base, and I was something of a fish out of water.

The kids in my new neighbourhood were pretty tough. Most had lived on the same street their entire lives. They weren’t used to having new people in their ‘hood.

My sins, apart from being new, were that I was smart (but not as smart-mouthed as I am now), I was shy and I was tiny.

There was a cement bridge at the top of my street that I had to cross to go anywhere, and that, of course, was where the kids hung out.

I think you can see where this is going.

Back in those days, we didn’t have simple, convenient, catch-all phrase – “bullying” – to describe what went on. I’m glad for that, because the things that happened and why they happened go a lot deeper than simply: “I was good, they were bad.”

All those kids on the bridge weren’t evil, tortured souls. They did some pretty mean things as a group, but they didn’t all go on to lead lives of crime, and I didn’t go on to become a saint.

And that’s, unfortunately, what the word “bullying” does. It reduces a complex set of social problems and issues around poverty, power, mental health, social status, learning abilities, self-esteem, parenting and life experience to an oversimplified concept for which we expect to find a single, simple solution.

In our own sincere, but somewhat misguided way, we feel that slapping a label on a problem brings us closer to understanding or solving it. But to try to solve “bullying” by criminalizing “bullies” or penalizing parents or demonizing the school system is not going to work.

Let’s be honest about this: kids can do stupid things. Their brains are not fully formed, they don’t have enough life experience to have perspective on anything, and they exist in a world which is a constant struggle to establish where they “fit in” and how much personal power they have.

I’m not just talking about the “bad” kids, here. ALL kids exercise poor judgement from time to time. To slap a label on them: “You’re a bully; you’re bullied” doesn’t acknowledge that all kids have a bit of bad and a bit of good in them, and that they’re constantly experimenting with that.

Look at your own kid. Is she or he a “bully?” Of course not. Is she a little insecure, and harassing another kid over her appearance or her friends? Maybe, but she volunteers on weekends at the food bank. Is your son chasing someone home regularly and threatening to beat him up for no apparent reason? Yeah, but he’s the star pitcher on the baseball team.

My point is that we need to address the issues behind the behaviours and leave these useless labels behind. Yes, the harassment of kids by other kids is wrong and needs to be addressed and prevented or punished. But can we dig a little deeper to find out what’s really going on?

Those kids on the bridge had nothing better to do. They were poor, bored, and in some cases had terrible parental role models. Calling them “bullies” wouldn’t have solved the problem. A community centre and a bit of mentoring might have.