I was serious about ballet for a long time, but my mom got me into tap and jazz and modern and hip-hop, and I was one of those over-lessoned children.
The daily press, the immediate media, is superb at synecdoche, at giving us a small thing that stands for a much larger thing. Reporters on the ground, embedded or otherwise, can tell us about or send us pictures of what happened in that place at that time among those people.
I can't bear the thought of my mother having to push me around in a wheelchair. I'd rather die quickly.