Take notes. I get a lot of Reader Flack from readers that strenuously resent: “Why do you always have to deal with dead kids. It’s depressing us. Poor us.” I write about children I know. Having been in Special Education, I write about what I know. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Multiple Sclerosis. Pediatric AIDS in South Africa. ADHD. Neurodivergence. Autism spectrum. Addiction. Are just a few. Bad things. Like organic brain syndromes. Longevity is relative. I read this stuff where writers talk about raising the average age people are supposed to live.

Unless something goes wrong.

Something will go wrong. The suicide rate for aging homo sapiens has been creeping up for decades. I call them the Happiness Heretics. They do not want to be among us, and it makes us angry. At them. They feel their lives were torturous as they lived them, and death is a security blanket. A promise. Who would want to live a life defined by pain forever. We make them live for us. But we can be circumvented. “Hold still, it’s for your own good.”

Living forever is not for anyone’s own good. When someone can’t speak, all the helpers step in to interpret. The helpers have their own message. “If you ask too many questions, you will be labeled as difficult, and we will have to call (authority) the doctor to get you some happy pills that sedate you so we don’t have to have these kinds of conversations.

Articulate the quality of life you have right now. Why are you here.