The boy in the bubble (tea)

I think I need to find a new place to drink tea. After becoming rather disgusted with One World Cafe, I’ve been spending my hard-earned money across the street at Starbucks. The neighborhood place just wasn’t cutting it, with their large dining area and tiny, cramped coffee arrangements. The food is absolutely wonderful; possibly the best Peoria has to offer. But the coffee has a burnt, bottom-of-a-sock-drawer taste… and their tea is almost an afterthought.

So I’ve put up with the ridicule from my peers, sitting at a bar sipping from my paper cup of tea. Why don’t they use real dishes?

The last straw was tonight, when a loud girl plopped next to me, bit into her cookie, and exclaimed, “hello? hellllllloooooo? umm, this is stale.” My knuckles were white.

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Photo courtesy Baylor College of Medicine Archives

I read an older article in the alternative newspaper The Houston Press a few weeks ago, one that explored how happy the “Boy in the Bubble” really was. Most figured he felt lucky to be alive at all… but do you really believe that?

Read for yourself. It’s long, but so very worth it.

“Why didn’t they do something to me before I was old enough to care?” he asked. “When I was three, I wouldn’t have cared. When all this mess started, didn’t they ever think about or realize that they were dealing with my life? They made decisions without ever thinking about anything except what they wanted to do, not about all this crap that I’m in.

“I am a mouse surrounded by ten cats, and there are no dogs to chase the cats away …. Where do you suppose I could get some legal advice?”

- David Vetter, a few months before his 10th birthday

Bursting the Bubble by Steve McVicker

May 2, 2006

Posted in cogitations.