I’m not writing about Jimmy Kimmel

We’ve never watched the “Jimmy Kimmel Show.”  Too late at night for us.

But what about “Jeopardy,” also on ABC, our favorite show of all time — we’ve been having usually friendly, and sometimes unfriendly, competitions with that show since it first aired in 1964.  That’s a lot of shows and, parenthetically, I need to tell you that the questions are getting harder.  Too much pop culture for us old-timers. Maybe it would be a big ego boost if we just stopped watching. But that would be a pyrrhic victory, which is not a victory at all.

And the people at ABC probably won’t even know if we’ve banned their station.  Unless they do!  Anyway, they should be ashamed of themselves, which they probably aren’t, but they should be.! Whither America?

What I want to write about now is something equally devastating, phantasmagoric, and unreal.  I’m really unable to get this topic out of my mind. That’s vaccines.  Am I really, in 2025, going to discuss something that seemed resolved centuries ago, when the very first vaccine for smallpox was introduced in the late 1700s?  The initial arguments around that vaccine were so similar to some of those we hear currently that it would be laughable, if it weren’t so tragic.  That vaccine, derived from cows, even had detractors fearing they would turn into cows from the inoculation.

My birth preceded almost all known vaccines except smallpox.  Even my father, born in 1905, had been vaccinated against smallpox. He had a large scar on his upper arm but he reassured me that it was much better than the disease.  He was correct as usual. And by the time he received his shot, inoculations had been around for over a hundred years.  My grandmother made sure that all six of her kids, three of each gender, were vaccinated.  Of course she did! Why not?

I became a mother in 1963.  Reflecting on those days forces me to confront my parenting skills, such as they were, or weren’t, and determine whether I did everything right.  Of course I didn’t.  I sometimes wonder if I did anything right.

Like what you ask?  Well, today  I wouldn’t park my sleeping baby’s carriage and leave it alone in front of a busy supermarket.  I remember doing exactly that, walking to the Acme on Newark’s Lyons Avenue as the little one lay fast asleep, putting on the brakes and parking her right there, and then doing some shopping. Lots easier than any other options in those days. Nothing happened.  Therefore, at least in hindsight,  she was totally safe. Did I know about the Lindbergh kidnapping?  I don’t know.  That had happened in 1932. It probably wouldn’t have been very much on my radar. And believe me, she wasn’t the only napping baby in front of the market.

But, then again, I must have been a tad uncomfortable because I never did it again.

There were other surprising things that Jewish mothers did.  When I worked as a hotel day-camp counselor in the late 1950s, on orders of our camp director, an obviously foolish man, I would take all of my group, the 4-year-old boys, out on the lake in a rowboat.  No safety precautions at all, life jackets or otherwise.  There was I, a 16-year-old high school student with her first real job, entrusted with seven or eight little kids with no way to save their lives if the boat tipped over.  I knew this was dangerous but their parents, particularly their Jewish mothers, could see that too.  Not a one ever said a single word or kept her child out.  We were lucky indeed that nothing horrible ever happened.

So why am I remembering these things today, in the present climate, in 2025?  No parent I know would park their baby unguarded outside a market, or allow their young kids into a rowboat in unfathomably deep dark water.

And truly no parent would refuse to give their child a vaccine to prevent a deadly disease.  My grandmother knew that more than 100 years ago.

And the result is that smallpox is no longer considered a threat in the United States.  It has been eradicated.  No more big ugly scars on upper arms.  Gone.

Thus, can anyone at all explain to me what’s happening in our government vis a vis vaccines? Can anyone make sense out of keeping kids from getting life-saving vaccinations?  I hear the reports, and it is pretty obvious that the vaccine naysayers, Kennedy and his mighty band of know-nothings, are working feverishly to make sure that our kids remain unprotected.  I don’t know about you, but I certainly would never believe that this could happen in our own nation.  We are the United States of America.

One of our great-grandchildren, the youngest, is seven months old. He was born almost two months  prematurely and is now attending a daycare facility in Manhattan.  He is old enough to have had a shot against covid, but in the great city of New York, fount of amazing medical treatment, a place where people flock from throughout the world to obtain the finest care, his super-educated successful parents have been unable to get him his covid vaccine.  Their pediatrician cannot provide it.

In the past some of my opinions have been disagreeable to some of my readers.  I accept that with equanimity. We’re all wired differently.  But I absolutely will find it impossible to believe that there are any of you out there who are supportive of withholding vaccines from your children unless they are physically unable to receive them.  Are there?

Rosanne Skopp of West Orange is a wife, mother of four, grandmother of 14, and great-grandmother of nine. She is a graduate of Rutgers University and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She is a lifelong blogger, writing blogs before anyone knew what a blog was! She welcomes email at rosanne.skopp@gmail.com