Victory Over Fatigue

Dottie and Roger have been up half the night getting ready, packing, trying to organize for their move from Harried Heights. And because in the morning people think they can do twice as much as what little time they have allows, Roger and Dottie are trying to juggle two days' work into one. . .

"ROGER, QUICKLY, the moving van is here!"

"I'm coming, dear. Just can't get this big chest through the bedroom door— how'd we ever get it in here in the first place?"

Dottie and Roger have been up half the night getting ready, packing, trying to organize for their move from Harried Heights. And because in the morning people think they can do twice as much as what little time they have allows, Roger and Dottie are trying to juggle two days' work into one.

They drank so much coffee the night before, staying up late doing their in come tax, that they had to take sleeping pills to get to sleep, aspirin the next morning for their headaches, and ant acids for their squeamish stomachs when the breakfast jelly doughnuts didn't agree with them. But they're not the only ones on this routine.

Jud and Bert, the moving men, just pulled in from Hastingsville, and they have to make tracks to get Dottie and Roger's stuff over to Busy Town, nearly a day's drive away.

"Boy, I sure could use a snooze," admits Jud, "but we've got to get on the go."

"Go is right," chimes in Bert, "if we're going to meet Roger at his new house at seven o'clock tomorrow morning."

"Seven!" yells Jud. "Wow, I thought it was at least gonna be eight!"

"Nope," answers Bert, "Roger's new boss wants him to pop in the office at eight sharp to check over a few things." Dottie and Roger decided to follow the van for a while on the freeway and try to keep up with it. They seemed to be making good time for the first two and a half hours. Then Roger noticed it! The van seemed to be heading for the guard rail. Dottie screamed as Roger dug his foot desperately into the brake. The side of the van became a mountain of steel moving toward them. As Dottie's shrieks faded into a roar of skidding rubber treads she thought she saw lights above her. Then all was black.

The lights nickered on and off again —seemingly high overhead. Somewhere a voice as in a dream spoke: "She's a little tight, Bill."

"More relaxation," said another voice. As the anesthesiologist increased the anesthetic, another physician stood at the monitor watching the flickering lights and shaking his head. Nurses scurried across the sterile room carrying trays and tubes. The masked team around the table worked frantically, and someone called for more blood to be brought in.

Outside in the long tiled corridor a hospital official questioned the State patrolman, "Just what is the official report, officer?"

"Truck driver fell asleep at the wheel —tried to push himself too far. Just a case of fatigue."

"Fatigue," said the hospital attendant with a note of irony in his voice. "We've got the two truckers in emergency— they'll be O.K., but with those fractures, they'll both be off the road for six months. The husband's in fair shape, but he'll pull through all right. The wife's critical, though. Don't know about her yet. Fatigue!"

"Looks like you could use some sleep yourself," said the policeman.

"Yeah. Been on call thirty-six hours already this weekend, but I have to drive home as soon as I'm off and take the kids to school, 'cause the wife's on early-morning shift now. What a life, huh!"

Dottie can be thankful that she did pull through. Many others do not. But one thing you can say for sure, Roger and Dottie will remember in the future that the human body can take just so much exertion.

When you are tired, your body does not respond well to any activity. As a result, people often push themselves even further to try to get things done. Strenuous muscle activity. Long hours of mental push. It just doesn't pay off in the long run.

There are two kinds of fatigue most people experience. Craig Baxter, for in stance, farms all day, hauling bales of hay or breaking up the hard ground, plowing and sowing, stooping along the fallow rows and inspecting the soil, or checking the ears of corn in the low field along the creek. When Craig sits down to read the paper at night he just drops right off to sleep. He's worn out. His fatigue leaves him relaxed. Hypotonic fatigue is what Craig experiences.

But Bud Carter pushes papers across his desk all day. He rushes through a pile of correspondence, dictates madly until lunch, grabs a bite to eat, sits down at the desk again and tackles a wall of accounting ledgers and unbalanced figures that strain his brain. Bud tries hard to get to sleep when he comes home at night, but he is so mentally exhausted that his fatigue drops him off at his house tight and tense. Another fight with his wife doesn't help a bit, either—and they didn't even mean to argue over what stupid TV show to watch until all bleary-eyed hours of the morning. Poor Bud Carter suffers from hypertonic fatigue.

Bud and Craig need to trade places for a few days—balance off their different life-styles. What would be ideal, of course, is for Bud to work part of the day with Craig on the farm and Craig to work the rest of the day with Bud in the office. A job that balances physical work with mental activity would do untold good to thousands. But life isn't always constructed just the way we would like it to be.

The Modern Life-style

What is modern life made up of any way? With too many families it's beginning the day by jumping out of bed, grabbing a bite to eat, and rushing off to work without a good breakfast.

Driving adds to the tension. Red lights all the way into town. Agonizing bumper-to-bumper stalling on the expressways. Pileups on the turnpikes. A boss who's a bear. A secretary who spends more time at her coffee break than she does at her desk.

And if it's life at home with mother, there's always the eight children your kids just brought home from their neighborhood collection, the spilled Hawaiian punch on the newly waxed kitchen floor, the cat scratch mother discovered on her brand-new living room breakfront.

And so to relax, the young couples of modern suburbia go out to a movie: 12 murders, 14 major gunfights, 32 persons shot, 11 fist fights, and thundering symphonic Beethoven backgrounds to twenty scenes of ultra-violence.

The late news on TV before going to bed that night doesn't improve matters —it merely provides the riots, hijackings, floods, earthquakes, fires, and assassinations that will filter their way into their troubled fits of dreams. The completed day of modern man—a night mare of tension and stress.

Is There an Answer?

But is there no answer to all this chaos? Yes, you can wait until continued fatigue forces a stroke or fatal heart attack. Then you'll have nothing to worry about at all. Fifty-five out of every 100 Americans who die each year do so either from heart attack or stroke. They've tensed their blood vessels and heightened their blood pressure and raised their cholesterol levels so high . . . they finally pop their corks—plinnng! snap!

Betty and Cory Hambleton, however, decided they didn't want that to happen to them. The Hambletons have two kids in grade school. Betty is a practical nurse and usually works full time. Cory is an editor and works for a big news paper in Bustle City. When Cory comes home at the end of a work-packed day, the chatter of the kids about what they did at school only adds to his swelling headache.

So what does Betty do? Tell him to go soak his head? No, she suggests he soak his feet—in warm water. It usually helps. The blood is drained from the cranium and the headache subsides. Betty tells all her neighbors how a warm bath or shower followed by a rubdown or massage can really help them unwind.

Then the Hambletons eat a light supper—light so they will sleep well—and they have a very special rule in their house. Little talking in the evenings at the table, because Mom and Dad listen to their favorite relaxing music and read to each other from their collection of enjoyable books—while the kids listen!

Then they go outside for the most important thing they need. Exercise! In the spring and summer when the days are long and daylight lingers for hours, the entire family works in the garden. In autumn the four of them ride their bikes for blocks and blocks through the falling colors of crisp leaves that speckle their neighborhood. In the winter every one helps with shoveling snow and finally making the one great big snow man. And as muscles are used, fatigue falls away like the fresh falling snow.

There is another family less fortunate than the Hambletons. She is a family of one. The neighbors along her block of red-brick row houses with white marble steps scrubbed dull through the years of time have come to call her Grandma Greene. She lives in the same two-story house she lived in fifty years ago when she and her husband first came to town. They had just been married then. Now he is gone—been dead some ten years or so.

Grandma Greene got tired just sitting and looking out the window. She smiled at the same people who always passed by and nodded. She rocked in her chair and sometimes fixed something light to eat. Once in a while she walked to the corner grocery, but more often than not the neighbor boy ran to the store for her. She really didn't do much of anything, Grandma Greene. Yet she was awfully tired. You see, she was bored. And as with stress and tension, boredom can also bring on fatigue.

An Amazing Discovery

Then one day when Pastor Kindly happened to visit Grandma Greene he made an amazing discovery. "Why, yes, Pastor," she said, "it's true. When we used to live on Forty-second Street I played the organ for all the services at the church. But I can't remember any of that now!"

"Tell me," thought Pastor Kindly out loud, "do you think you'd be willing to play a little on the old piano in the primary room? We lost our Mrs. Helpful there—her husband was transferred to a job out of State. I mean, the songs the little tots sing are simple. They just need someone to sort of help them along."

Pastor Kindly could tell by the twinkle that started deep in the hidden recesses of Grandma Greene's faint eyes that he had won a victory that day. A desire was kindled, and as if out of the depths of a secret treasure a light shone. "I'll try!" said Grandma Greene with determination.

Now you won't guess who's giving be ginning lessons three days a week on that old piano in the primary room at Pastor Kindly's little inner-city church. And she loves it. She's rarely bored any more—and what's better yet, Grandma Greene hardly ever feels tired. Her fatigue is gone.

So would yours be gone—if only you would be willing to try. To try some exercise. To try a little more of being out doors. To let nature get hold of you and blow some breezes down your back (as long as you're well bundled up in winter) or send some refreshing rain to play on your forehead, turning all those worried furrows into a smile. And when you echo the pitter-patter on your umbrella, your song will not be of fatigue. And when you drag your feet through the autumn leaves or the crystal-patterned glistenings of newly fallen snow, your step will spring like march tempo but seldom with fatigue.

And keep it going at work. Take water breaks, not coffee breaks. Take kit ten naps with your eyes closed for a tiny while. Shut out the business banter for a time—even if you have to press your hands to your ears—and think of roses in the spring or the fishing boat on the lake drifting lazily along the water's edge and gliding restfully through tall green reeds.

And sometimes you may even have to say to your boss, "Jim, I've just got to go out for a minute or two and take a quick walk around the block." And Jim will probably reply, "Hold on a minute, Steve, I'm coming with you. I need it too!"

And if you're not musical like Grandma Greene, and if you don't fish like Jim and Steve, and if you can't afford four ten-speed bikes like the happy Hambletons, there are a hundred thou sand other beautiful and wonderful ideas you can find to interest and keep happily active even the most fatigued corners of your mind. Grow an herb garden in your tiny apartment kitchen. Buy a bundle of books on Switzerland and Austria and Japan—and put Emily Dickinson to the test: "There is no frigate like a book" and sail the seven seas as you browse and muse to your heart's content.

And if you want to turn your hobby into money, why there's always baking homemade bread for the neighbors or putting up tomato and corn preserves. If you'd like to try painting, you might sell a few canvases to the local bank. And for the rough and ready handyman, there are a hundred fascinating sculptures and functional toys he can weld together from old car parts and nuts and bolts and pieces of pipe. All you have to do is want to. Put your will power in action—now!

Determine to demolish fatigue. Run it out of your life with exercise. Crowd it out of your life with art and music and vegetable gardens. Be like Ron Turnabout, who yelled with glee, "Relaxation, here I come, ready or not!"


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November 1975

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