If you live long enough and travel far enough, many of the things your mother warned you about will come true. I’ve started writing my memoir, and I realize my mother couldn’t have known about most of the things I’ve encountered. While mother told me it wasn’t polite to urinate in a public pool, she didn’t tell me not to pee in the rivers of Central and South America. I didn’t do that, but a friend did, and a tiny matchstick-sized catfish swam up his urethra and anchored itself there with sharp barbs. What I learned from his misfortune was if you must pee in a river in the jungle… You’d better be wearing a tight bathing suit.
However I’ve learned, firsthand, something our mothers never knew, and most of our government and the media doesn’t want us to know.