Does everyone dream of fame, or at least notoriety?
    One way to get my name in flashing lights all over big cities would be to change my name to “Don’t Walk.” When acknowledged by someone whose name I know, I usually get greeted with “Hi, there.”
     That’s when I tell the other person I’m planning to change my name to “There,” in order to get acknowledged more often. So the greeting will be “Hi, There (with a capital T.)”

     One occasion for elation was about nine years ago, when a question I asked Marilyn vos Savant got printed in “Parade” magazine. Marilyn, listed in “The Guinness Book of World Records” as having the highest IQ, responded to a question I asked about intelligence.
     Part of my question reads: “Why do people assume certain scientists are smarter than other people? We hear expressions like, ‘It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that . . . ‘How come I’ve never heard anyone say, ‘It doesn’t take a journalism teacher (my profession) to realize that . . .’?”
     Part of her reply: “I believe the reason . . . is that the terminology used in those sciences is majestic (like galaxies), unfamiliar (like superstring theory) and downright weird (like gauge bosons and fermions and gravitons).” It was flattering to receive phone calls from others who’d read the item in “Parade.”
     Another letter I wrote, more recently, which didn’t get published, went to Dear Abby. No, I wasn’t asking for advice to the lovelorn; rather, I wrote regarding her yearly Thanksgiving letter, which she sometimes called “a treat to my readers,” about what we ought to be thankful for.
     The Thanksgiving column, which appeared Thursday, has been modified somewhat in that it gets away from the “there are people worse off” tack. The column, now written by her daughter has run for a number of years, since Abigail Van Buren retired.
     The former Thanksgiving column got my hackles up because it continually implied that we should be thankful as long as there are people more miserable.
     She used to write:
     “How’s your health? Not so good? Well, thank God you’ve lived this long. A lot of people haven’t. You’re hurting? Thousands — maybe millions’ are hurting more.”
     Is that all it comes down to? What is the latent spirit-lifter involved in simply realizing that we’re better off than someone else?
     On financial status, Dear Abby wrote:
     “How’s your pocketbook? Thin? Well, most of the world is a lot poorer. No pensions. No welfare. No food stamps. No Social Security. In fact, one-third of the people in the world will go to bed hungry tonight.”
     On a personal level, Abby makes a point. As a class, we don’t wish illness or poverty to beset us. But I question the lack of altruism implicit in that “stop-complaining” attitude. Bad luck, ill health, impoverishment of people DOES affect me, as it should everyone. Is it wrong not to be satisfied until armies stop killing one another? Is it delusional to believe that John Donne had it all together when he penned the lines, “No man is an island”? Don’t some of us still believe that the bell tolls not only for the unfortunate person who died last night, but for US too?
     Realizing that, by consolidating balances, cashing in an annuity and simply doing without some creature comforts, my family has reduced its number of active credit cards from 17 to ONE. Picking away at the balance for years, we’ve cut our total indebtedness to about one-fourth.
     These are reasons for thanksgiving. We feel good about it, but I still admire my mother, the late Marie Trujillo, who retired ALL of her debts by age 65.
     Freedom from debt is a wonderful feeling, but again I beg to differ with Dear Abby, who repeatedly used to admonish her readers to be thankful that legions of people are more impoverished.
     Should it come down to that? Should I rejoice in the knowledge that several of my classmates have contracted heart disease or diabetes, whereas I have not? Does gratefulness simply end when we can identify an advantage we have over others?
     I’m appreciative that the current Dear Abby column encourages those of us who “have” to visit the sick in hospitals, to call someone who’s lonely, to feed someone who’s hungry, as the staff did Thursday at El Sombrero Restaurant.
     For one, I refuse to adopt the attitude that I should be grateful that the pain in my thigh is nothing compared to that of my neighbor who’s wheel-chair bound.
     So, when possible, I hope you and I can actively assist those who would appreciate our help; and whatever we do, let’s not distill the entire notion of thanksgiving to a comparison between ourselves and someone who’s worse off than we.