On communication, professional and otherwise.
A friend was marveling at how addicts of all kinds care about nothing except getting their next fix—not their family, not their friends, not their jobs, nothing.
“That’s one of the charms of addiction,” I replied, with just enough first-hand knowledge to add casually, “Simplifies things.”
Something’s gone wrong with VYVGART Hytrulo.
This is one of those drugs, like Skyrzi, that treats diseases that have been invented since we were kids, like Wet AMD, moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis—and, in this case a thing called CIDP, which apparently makes walking difficult.
For a few years now, we’ve watched a commercial featuring a woman with a cane “hitting the road with my number one” (her fella, I guess) … and a cloyingly dweeby guy in leg braces, “hitting the fairways with the fellas.”
Well Wednesday night, I saw a new version of the ad. The woman is still rambling with her Romeo, but this time, the guy isn’t hitting the fairways with the fellas. He’s playing miniature golf with three other middle aged men, and boasts that he’s “putting with the fellas.” Clank!
Ummmm, first, four grown men playing mini golf together should face questions from journalists and the scrutiny of public mental health agencies if not the police. Second, if you’re reshoot your commercial to capture this odd scenario, can we adjust the copy to keep the alliteration? “Putting with my pals.” Was that so hard?
But most puzzling: What claim about the limitations of VYVGART Hytrulo caused lawyers and ad people to hunker down together and agree to convert a round of real golf into some kind of perverted adult putt-putt?
I can’t find a version of the new ad online, or any explanation of it. But something’s happening here. And at Writing Boots, we’re going to get to the bottom of it.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: These drug commercials are almost as diverting as drugs, themselves.
Scout is moving out today—to a high rise apartment, downtown, near her grad school and the restaurant where she’s working.
It feels terrible, taking her across town and depositing her, with a few clothes and provisions, in a small room away from us. It feels worse than taking her to college.
In a daily meditation, I must remind myself why she can’t just stay here, with us.
That meditation will be much speeded along by a reading I just heard, by the writer Carl Hiaasen, of a 1958 column by Ernie Lyons, about the St. Lucie River. He mentions the pines along the river bank, whose seeds spiral down “on their little wings, to find a starting place away from the deadly shade of their parents.”
And also, I keep in mind a bike ride with five-year-old Scout:
“Dad, do you have words you like?”
“Mellifluous. And scout.”
“Is scout a word?”
“Yep.”
“What does it mean?”
“A scout is someone who goes ahead of the group and sees what’s up there and comes back and tells everyone what to expect.”
“Why did you name me that?”
“I guess because that’s the kind of person I hope you’ll be.”
“Oh no, Dad!“
“What?”
“I’ll get lost!”
“No you won’t. You don’t have to go up ahead until you’re ready.”
“I don’t?”
“Besides, you’re already a scout. You’re already going ahead—you’re going to school without us, you’re going places in your mind that we don’t go, you’re riding your bike ahead of me all the time.”
“You’re right, Dad. I am.”
“Yes, honey, you are.”
Godspeed, Babe.
***
Postscript: This was what she woke up to on this first morning of the rest of her life.
