On Friday, I received a rather large package from my workplace in the mail, which turned out to be a thick book titled ‘Health at Home: Your Complete Guide to Symptoms, Solutions, and Self-Care‘, which I have determined is basically a way to try to encourage employees to not go to the doctor even when it seems clear to a normal person that they should.
Inside are handy tidbits about fondling your own breasts and asshole, self-treatment of STDS (what?!?), and even miracle tips to help you stop smoking: ‘Place a rubber band on your wrist and snap it every time you get an urge to smoke’. Because what every person who is trying to quit smoking needs is a ring of red, raised welts on their wrist, when it would be more immediately painless to go outside and smoke instead. Obviously this book was written by a sadist who has never wrestled with quitting smoking, because when the options are A) hurt self with rubber band and B) take a break from work out and loll about in the sunshine with a cigarette, B is going to win every time. You might as well tell fat people to stab themselves in the kidneys every time they feel the urge to eat.
Let me tell you something: In 7th grade, my pre-algebra teacher, Mr. Eggebrecht, at Lance Jr High made me wear a rubber band around my wrist and snap it every time I got a problem wrong. By the end of the period, my wrist was nearly doubled in size and raw.
He was right. The rubber band taught me some important lessons:
1. Some teachers are assholes. 2. The math gene is clearly hereditary and didn’t get passed on from my accountant father. 3. Skinny rubber bands hurt WAY more than thick ones.
In retrospect, I suppose I was lucky that he didn’t come along a little later in my life, say, as my calculus professor. I feel certain, were that the case, that I would no longer have a left hand. The little rubber band trick didn’t make me any better at math, but it does explain why I get irrationally angry whenever I’m confronted with a question concerning trains, speed, and distance.
Yesterday, I took the time and cleaned through my bathroom drawers–it’s amazing how much room is cleared up when items like crappy makeup samples, old hair products, and the like are tossed in the trash. Among the items to go was an old razor, which was rendered dull and useless from being used to battle the dense, wiry hair-forest on my German-Italian-Gypsy body. It was ridiculously dull, to the point where I could scrape it along a leg and the hair would brazenly stay in place, so it obviously was doing me no good and needed to be replaced. This went into the overstuffed trash bin along with everything else.
So, having just indicated how dull this razor was, I would like to know how it managed to shred up my middle finger when I picked up the trash bin. The important finger. Now that it’s wrapped in a bandage that looks like bacon, how is anyone supposed to take me seriously when I indicate to them that I find their driving ability to be sub-standard? They will be thinking “mmmm, delicious bacon–how kind of you to remind me to ingest delicious bacon, fellow driver!” when I am thinking “fuuuuuuuuuuuuck yooooooou!!” You see how this poses a problem.
The ‘Health at Home’ book isn’t really helping, either. It has a rather nifty illustration of a nail jammed through various dermal layers, but other than that, it tells me nothing about how to function with a Frankenfinger and skips right over to ‘ovarian cysts’.
Perhaps I need to tie up my finger and my ovary with a rubber band and snap it, hard.
If I recall Intro to Psychology correctly (which is, shall we say, doubtful, given that we’re talking 8AM classes in 1993), the rubber band snap is a well-established form of negative reinforcement for behavior modification. I don’t know how effective it could be against actual addictions, but it certainly isn’t a sound approach for learning. I’m reasonably confident that the situation you describe would have been grounds for getting the teacher fired, at a minimum. Corporal punishment’s only supposed to be for behavioral problems, not academic ones, and is supposed to hurt, not maim.
I understand how negative reinforcement works on experimental subjects when an outside entity is delivering it, but in terms of self-infliction, I just don’t get it. Especially when dealing with an addiction. For instance, when I last talked to Amy about her gambling problem, she told me that feeling the urge to gamble was exactly the same as having a desperate need to breathe. So when you feel like you need to breathe, is your choice going to be to snap a rubber band or to breathe?
Though I suppose rubber-banding it is as likely to have the same success rate as AA (5%).
As far as the teacher goes..if only I knew back then what I know now.
And in the interim I’ve been informed in no uncertain terms (by Psychology PhD candidates, who should know) that the rubber band snap is actually not “negative reinforcement”, but “positive punishment”, because a stimulus is being added to influence against a behavior, rather than something being taken away to influence in favor of a behavior.
Which I only bring up now because you’ve linked back to this post 🙂
And in the interim I’ve been informed in no uncertain terms (by Psychology PhD candidates, who should know) that the rubber band snap is actually not “negative reinforcement”, but “positive punishment”, because a stimulus is being added to influence against a behavior, rather than something being taken away to influence in favor of a behavior.
Which I only bring up now because you’ve linked back to this post 🙂
Considering you cut yourself with an old razor blade, you should look for the tetanus home remedy.
Eh, I washed the cut and the blade wasn’t rusty, so I’m not concerned.
Perhaps I need to tie up my finger and my ovary with a rubber band and snap it, hard.
ha!
It might teach those eggs a lesson about what they can expect in the future!
It’s just a spam