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Ask Dr. Babooner

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Dear Dr. Babooner,

My husband is totally wigged out by the irrational fear that he might die under a piece of the falling UARS (Upper Air Research Satellite) later this week. I told him the odds that the satellite would break up and come crashing down to earth on exactly the right trajectory to hit him in the forehead with a killing shot are, frankly, astronomical. He said the satellite was designed to be an astronomical object, so beating those odds would come naturally to it.

I didn’t think he really understood what I was saying, so I pointed out that his personal chance of being struck by a piece of debris is about one in several trillion. He pointed out that the satellite is a government object, and several trillion is like nothing to the government.

I told him there was no record of anyone ever being injured by a piece of falling satellite, and he said the government would have to make sure that any record of such a thing would certainly be erased. The fact that no record exists is, he says, sure proof that many injuries have already occurred.

Why doesn’t he worry about bad things that actually could happen, like snow blowing in under the broken front door that he said he would fix this summer, but didn’t?

Sincerely,
Possible UARS Widow

I told PUW that her husband, like most people, worries as a form of entertainment. Risk is a stimulant, and so is rage. As a government-hater, the remote but enticing possibility that this tax supported object will harm him provides your husband with an irresistible high. His body is producing waves of adrenaline every time he thinks about it. That problem with the front door, however, is a terrible downer, and any attempt he makes to fix it could end in failure. Thinking about Big Brother trying to kill him with a satellite is win-win. If it actually does take him out, it proves he was right all along. And if it misses him, it means he dodged a school bus sized bullet.

But that’s just one opinion. What do you think, Dr. Babooner?

40 thoughts on “Ask Dr. Babooner”

  1. I think PUW is maybe more a H(opeful)UW.
    In my mother’s side of the family, the Wetter side, there is no real father’s side, we say we all have a worry gene. I am not sure we are joking.
    MY daughter’s facebook has collected a long and angry discussion, still going about all the unwanted changes taking away what people thought were more durable services. The degradation and for my daughter and many others outright loss of MPR classical signal was long and very angry. But also the faecbook mess. Netflix increase in prices and very messy service . Huge jump in prices and/or loss of parts of cable TV in places. The B&N bookstore here, and I bet elsewhere, cutting way back on the number of actual books. Lots of folks out here on the prairie have had a few buses drop.
    So does having some bad things happen increase or decrease your chance for the space junk hitting you? Yes, I know the stats folks would sapaprate events are separate events. BUTI HAVE THE WETTER FAMILY WORRY GENE

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    2. Yes, I think there must be a worry gene. It expresses it’s self in various ways. I’m told I worry too much about some things and I don’t worry enough about some things that seem to really trouble other people.

      No matter what it is that you worry about, there are probably some things that don’t seem to bother you that others think you should worry about. For example do you think I should be more worried about keeping doors and windows locked to prevent unwelcome incursions by undesireable people? In some places they have bars on all their windows, but I don’t think there is any reason to keep windows locked where I live. Still, I am told locking windows is a good thing and I should start doing it.

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  2. I think PUW should find a handyman service to replace the front door completely (since Husband won’t fix it), and then tell Husband he must stay indoors until it has been confirmed that the space junk has landed. There should, however, be some caveats to his interior “time out” like she gets to filter all news (television, radio, internet, newspaper) lest he find himself too fair into the “nutbar” segments of news reporting (Weekly World News, if it is still published, can be provided as entertainment, however). He must wear a tinfoil hat if he is allowed to leave the house as a sort of a Scarlet Letter indicating his UARS fears (fair warned is fair armed for the neighbors – and she can tell Husband she read on the internet that this will deflect the junk). And then she should stock up on popcorn, Twizzlers and Milk Duds and watch the entertainment at home that Husband provides while waiting for the UARS to land in their front yard (or on their roof or…). Heck, who knows, maybe Husband is right and they’ll be lucky enough that it will knock down the volunteer tree in the back yard that has been a nuisance for the last decade that Husband just hasn’t gotten to felling himself…

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      1. Anything on Fox, Glenn Beck is creating his own station as I recall (or maybe it was an internet site for “news”), those dark recesses of the interwebs where MB supporters lurk…

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  3. Good morning to all,

    There isn’t too much that you can do, Possible Widow. You could try something like Anna suggests, but in the long run, you really can’t do anything except put up with all that worry. You can ignore most of it, if that’s possible. Don’t completely ignore all the worry. That will probably just cause an increase in that behavior. Then there is always the possibility that some of the worries are real. Has the government really told us the truth about the stuff falling from space? Maybe we should all start wearing helments

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  4. i think the chicken little syndrome is running rampant these days. there are problems and there always have been but the fact that we all carry multi media in our pocket everywhere we go places a new level of priority on these formerly remote events. remember space debris falling in the 60’s? me neither. it fell but we didn’t have it in our pockets. it showed up on page 8 of the b section of the paper right after the election news from bulgaria. hey whats up in bulgaria these days? i look it up and find an interesting rticle on post communist art at a museum similar to the stuff we looked at at the russina museum of art on our field trip . i also discove bulgaria is next to kosovo my new son in laws home country. i wonder if they will have space junk concerns in kosovo today?

    http://www.google.com/search?q=bulgaria&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8#q=bulgaria&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&prmd=imvnsu&source=univ&tbm=nws&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=mDJ7Tp38DYnrgQfynazGAQ&ved=0CGsQqAI&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=7643ed20836e1a00&biw=1366&bih=673

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    2. I remember the space junk falling scare of the 60s due to a humorus attempt of a person I knew to sell protective helments. He found some cheap helments, and painted targets on them, and then said he was selling them as safety gear to prevent head injuries from falling space junk.

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      1. find me an example of 11/8 time tunes. i got a huge kick out of the albanian music my daughters new famiy and friends call their own and they got a kick out of an american who had the good taste to like their music

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  5. Let it land here. I am ready to go out in a pancake of glory. But no one will be able to get in to find us. My wife will as always make sure all the doors and windows are locked.

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  6. One more post than going to get my wife up to go to, where else, a Dr.
    Just got my mail from yesterday. It comes so late I forget to get it, after 6 most days. Postal cut backs causing it. Do not really care when it comes.
    Got results of several blood tests.Some I have never heard of. Trying to figure out the highly abbreviated report they sent me in an arcane code. So don’t know what the tests are for and what the results are.
    A brief note is attached saying two of the tests are “moderately elevated” and are “generalized nonspecific markers of inflammation.” That’s the only explanation.
    S’pose I should worry about the results, but I’m more worried about the coming bill to pay for these tests.
    Space junk falling? What me worry? Especially after the second day in a row of a glorious bike ride in early morning mist.
    Goo day all TTFN

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    2. Try labtestsonline,org for help with the report. I don’t have any advice about the bill, but I empathize and commiserate.

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  7. Dear PUW,
    I think your husband needs to face facts. If it is his time, it is his time. If he tries to avoid a sudden and tragic (but attention-grabbing) death by following Anna’s plan, there is a Milk Dud with his name on it. Fate-it just is, he needs to read Oedipus Rex, it’s all in there.

    In the meantime PUW, you need to engage a lawyer-either way, you will be able to sue either the goverment or Hershey (if you play your cards right and have a really GOOD lawyer, you may be able to finger both). This will situate you nicely as a WUW (Wealthy UARS/Hershey Widow)-until of course, the Fates take it into their heads to snip off your thread, but of course, you are far to sensible to be fussed about that, and will simply enjoy whatever time you have remaining to the fullest (because you just never know……)

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  8. Where’s Alfred E. Newman when we need him? PUW, find some Mad magazines, the older the better – your nutjob… er… husband needs some humorous escape with a “What, Me Worry” theme.

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  9. It think that those who worry are more likely to live longer and reproduce, so that the worrying gene indeed is passed along from one generation to the next. I guess the trick is to know what is reasonable to worry about and what is not, and then figure out how to put your energy into the worries that matter. I think that PUWs’ husband is rather full of himself. Why does he think he is so special that the satellite has his name on it? I think he has a bigger problem with ingrown narcissism than he does with anxiety.

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  10. My mom, sister, and wife are all prodigious worriers. I came to the conclusion long ago that there’s only so much worry energy needed and they (and many others like them) were already red-lining the ‘worry tachometer.’ So, I became more of a ‘doer.’ I found that being active in trying to solve the problem is much more therapeutic…even if you can’t actually fix the problem, at least you’re working toward that end.

    PUW needs to realize that there’s no good intellectual argument that will stop conspiracy-minded hubby from believing whatever he wants. So, what I have found to be the most effective strategy is to completely agree with the hairbrained paranoia. In fact (being the passive-aggressive person I can be at times), I will fuel this paranoia by suggesting other conspiracy avenues and consequences. Usually, there comes a point of ridiculousness where the person comes to reaize how nutty they’re being. And, if not, at the very least, it’s entertaining watching them twist in the typhonic winds of their own psychosis.

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  11. Maybe husband would enjoy some nice reading material about pandemic bird flu, the European debt crisis, or the Mayan calendar that forecasts the apocalypse. It’s not possible to get him to relinquish worry, so just try to redistribute it a little.

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    1. Good plan, Linda. I also think she should have him read information pamphlets about the symptoms of insidious neurological diseases and skin cancer.

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  12. Anyone else remember the Northern Exposure episode when Maggies’ boyfriend Rick (yet another one to die) got hit by a random satellite? Maybe PUW’s husband isn’t so far off! (Or he should at least stay off hilltops, esp. in Alaska.)

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    1. Hmmm…Is PUW’s name Maggie and she chose not to disclose this lest we wonder about her track record? (In which case Husband *should* worry…or wonder why he’s caught in a quirky TV show based in Alaska with a moose that likes to wander through town…)

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  13. Dear PUW,
    Please tell hubby that the crash of the UARS is really a top-secret government plan to recolonize Earth with little skinny gray people with almond-shaped green eyes and no apparent need for clothing. These little aliens are capable of living in the type of climate that we’ve been creating over the past 100 years or so. The government is aware that we won’t be able to live on earth anymore and they have sold the earth to an alien planet in exchange for transportation to an alien mothership. When the UARS crashes, the aliens will climb off of the junk and the mothership will appear above the Pentagon. The politicians and bureaucrats responsible for the sell-out will be beamed up and we’ll be left here to deal with aliens and climate change on our own.

    In order to keep the little gray people out, hubby will quickly fix the doors, windows, roof, ventilation system – everything. By the time he is done, the UARS will have crashed and either the aliens will have taken over or you can both go out for dinner.

    Happy travels!
    Dr. Babooner

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  14. the retrieval of space junk would be huge on ebay and the like. a piece of the charred re entry junk would fetch a pretty penny if documented so have your camera ready and bring out the experts and offer pieces of the pieces for 1000 dollars each. (knew a guy who bought the hollywood signs and dorthys ruby slippers among other items and cut them into tiny tiny pieces and sold them as genuine articles of collectable value for a bunch) a photo of your husband with a space probe through his forehead would make that space probe a lot more valuable. like a huge life insurance policy payoff. if only we all could be so lucky as to go that way.
    as for angst… ha ha ha … i had ulcers when i was 13 form my fathers wonderful genes. popped when i was 30 and have taught me the various applications of baking soda since. the note on quitely tense danes yesterday rang a familiar bell. it is my problem and my angst, why would i want to share it with you? never mind justifacation , if i only worried about stuff that mattered i would not be paying attention. the trick is to realize that there is absolutly only so much you can do and the rest is just self initiated balderdash that can play round and round and never stop. by the way, dale just fix the door.

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