Word: robin
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...reporter for a small daily newspaper in rural Upstate New York when I met Robin Starling. He was only 13 but the most critical event of his entire life had already occurred. The event had taken place when he was 10. He had been sitting stop one of the powerful diesel engine tractors on his father's prosperous Lewis County dairy farm. The tractor lurched forward unexpectedly. The 80-pound boy fell off his makeshift seat and into the tangle of steel blades. It was a wonder he wasn't decapitated was the comment from the doctors who saved...
...half years later, I was dispatched to the Starling family farm to interview Robin, who had been winning blue ribbons for his calf, Dickv, at county fair cattle shows throughout northern New York. As I followed Robin through his farm chores--gingerly side-stepping cow manure--I noticed that he got around surprisingly well on his mechanical limbs. I had unnecessarily steeled myself for his physical awkwardness. The awkwardness I found instead was the shyness typical of any boy going through puberty...
...those days when I hated the newspaper business. The boy's family had consented to the interview, perhaps seeing it as a way of demonstrating to Robin that he could lead an almost normal life. But more likely they saw it as a way of proving the same thing to themselves, and vindicating themselves from guilt over what was an avoidable accident. But we at the newspaper had initiated the story: we weren't content to list him among the other blue ribbon winners at the Jefferson County Fair, which would have been the normal treatment...
WHAT DID I SAY in my article? I did my job and I lied. I told my readers that Robin Starling is now leading a normal life. He's not only surviving, he's succeeding: he's winning blue ribbons. And he doesn't hold any grudges. Technology nearly killed him but look how it's making a nearly normal life for him now. I lied because the truth was not simply that technology was making a more normal life for him, but, more importantly, that it was making for him an existence with which other people could be comfortable...
...format of my article. But most probably were. We don't like to see things like legless little boys--they contradict our expectations and desires about the world. So we become willing accomplices in a scheme to cover up the truth. We have great psychological use for someone like Robin Starling who can appear to be normal and who therefore affirms what we would like to believe. We can successfully go on fooling ourselves like this because Robin Starling has a great stake in-making sure that we continue to see him as a success story. For if we view...