RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30274, 29 October 1963, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

THERAPHY

One of the best things about good health is that the man who has it seldom notices it. Only a minority start the day by beating themselves on their chests, drawing in air until their eyes nearly start from their heads, and proclaiming what a beautiful morning it is. For all that, health consciousness is worth engendering in the young, it helps form good habits and so forth. There is a boy of five in Christchurch whose parents revel modestly in rude health. Never a cough or a curse or a complaint of a morning. And the little chap, after an industrious scrubbing of his teeth, asked one recent morning to be held

up to the mirror so he could see for himself that the job had been properly done. His reaction was “Help, they’re blunt!” Something approaching physical perfection has been attained in this household. Never was a day lost from work, by father, from school, by the children, or from bridge and golf, by mother. Until recently. It was a shock even to all these well-tuned sysstems when the head of the house was bundled off to hospital with an appendix which, shamed of its deficiencies, wanted out. The five-year-old was gravely concerned about this. And he thought the

least be could do was to gather up his cache* of pocket money and buy his father something to help while away the weary hour* in bed. The .gift was duly bestowed. The patient opened his parcel, to find a colouring book and a box of coloured pencils. He is a dutiful father, and it was a large book. He saw it was required of him to colour in the pictures for his son. His devotion to this task was something of an affront to the occupational therapy people. And it was only a couple of days before a new young psychiatrist began peeping at him from round the corner of the ward.