Tuesday October 5, 2021; 9:28 PM EDT
- This anecdote is a completely trivial incident, and I have no complaint about the person who gave me the flu shot this morning. This is what happened for the first time in forty years of my adult memory.#
- The nurse gave me the shot in my upper arm. I remarked on how small the needle felt. Then she said, "Oh, you're a bleeder." She wiped away a trickle of blood and applied a bandaid.#
- I can't remember ever having a trickle of blood after a shot. It's a first. As far as I know, I'm not "a bleeder."#
- It was a trivial matter, but her sweeping generalization was completely inaccurate. Interesting how easy that kind of mistake is to make.#
- And maybe this was a way of removing any possible blame, I don't know. Might she have thought that I would assume she made a mistake? I don't know. Did she make a mistake, hitting a vein? I have no idea. And it's a trivial thing.#
- But interesting to think about how easily it happened. How easily this kind of misjudgment--today trivial, tomorrow maybe not--comes to our species. And perhaps how defensively.#