An earnest approach to assigning blame

Earlier this week I enjoyed a chat with Lady Bracknell--or with the colleague who will be playing the role of Lady Bracknell next week in a community production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. The usual administrative claptrap is so much easier to stomach when I imagine the words spoken in the distinctive cadence of Lady Bracknell, who is remembered for lines like these:

Thirty-five is an attractive age. London is full of women of the highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit: touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately, in England at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. 

[After asking Jack Worthing whether he smokes and receiving an affirmative reply]: I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind.  

My favorite line occurs as Lady Bracknell questions Jack Worthing about his suitability as a match for her daughter:

Lady Bracknell: Are your parents living?

Jack Worthing: I have lost both my parents.

Lady Bracknell: To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. 

Cracks me up every time. Blaming an orphan for the loss of parents is ridiculous, of course, but it becomes more ludicrous when it comes to light that, in this situation, the child was not the careless one. 

We're not comfortable blaming Jack for being left behind with the baggage, but Odysseus is certainly comfortable blaming Poseidon for raining disasters down on his head--even though Odysseus himself bears a big chunk of the blame. A hero enmeshed in horrors may need to assign blame outside himself, but pointing the finger doesn't do much to get him out of trouble.

Yesterday someone tried to assign blame for the recent string of disasters besetting my household: "We all know who did this to you--the Man Upstairs." As if some all-powerful being gets his jollies by targeting my office with mold, my house with floods and windstorms, and my son with lymphoma. I don't intend to engage in theological debate regarding the origin of pain and suffering, but I have always felt that there's so much awfulness oozing around loose in the world that I shouldn't be surprised when some of it sticks to me. The rain falls on the just and the unjust, etc. It just seems like we've met our quota of rain for a while so we ought to be due for a long dry spell.

Silly me! 

The good news is that my son and I both have appointments at The James next Thursday, so we can share the ride.

The bad news is that his appointments deal with the extremely scary prospect of getting a bone marrow transplant while my appointment is a consultation with a surgical oncologist who would like to remove the cancerous lump from my breast. 

Lady Bracknell might say that having two members of the same household undergoing cancer treatment at the same time looks like carelessness, but whose carelessness? Finding someone to blame won't help any of us cope, but what will? 

I won't have a treatment plan until I get more imaging, so I have no idea how this new diagnosis will affect my ability to teach and perform my administrative tasks. Plenty of people have offered to help and I will take them up on those offers as soon as I have more information. Meanwhile, I teach my classes and perform my administrative tasks and take care of my household and try very hard not to think too much about what lies ahead. 

But if a little comedy from Lady Bracknell can lighten the load, I'll grab hold of it in earnest.