THE girl on the DART was almost 15 and it was almost the end of the world. There was a big party on Saturday and she had this desperate rash of pimples on her face.
She wasn't going to go to the party, it was as simple as that.
Her friends wanted her to go, it would be no fun talking about after it if she hadn't been there. "And you won't see him if you don't go," said one.
"But if he sees me like this, he'll go off me for life."
"You're not as bad as that new girl I mean, her face looks as if it's on fire," said one of the friends. "And do you remember the thing we saw on television? The documentary about the girl who got a skin graft on the National Health in England? You're nothing near as bad as she was."
It was meant to be reassuring, the series of comparisons.
But you had a feeling that they were going to go on and on. She was better than a Brillo pad, or someone's brother who had chicken pox, or a ploughed field.
I felt they should have stressed practical things like that it was going to be dark at the party, or she could wear her hair over her face or put on so much heavy make up that it would be like grouting. These would have been some consolation. To tell her that she should be grateful not to have a skin graft or a face that looks as if its on fire is giving her very cold comfort indeed.
I was not exactly handed from a hospital years ago where I reacted somewhat strongly to similar advice, but I feel they wouldn't crow with delight and excitement if I turned up there again. I was grizzling and whingeing about a pain in my knee, and a well meaning nun part of the administrative not the nursing staff, I hasten to add - tot tutted at me. "Really Miss Binchy what a fuss about a knee. Now if you could see the poor man in Room 44 and his leg".
I am not proud of having said what I did about the man in Room 44 - at least it was alliterative, I suppose - and the unfortunate nun was blasted out of the room never to return. But I still hold that the sentiment was correct.
You don't ever make other people better by telling them of those worse off than they are. In fact, it just adds to the collective misery around. I lay there in that bed thinking of my own poor knee and a bit about his poor leg and decided not that I was lucky but that the world was a bleak, bad place.
That girl with the pimples will think about her own face and then be reminded of others who have been brought to her attention.a She will not think she is luckier than they are and should therefore feel grateful and calm and happy; she will feel in the same unfortunate boat and think the problem is worse than it is.
For years I used to be guilty myself of giving the same kind of false cheer to an elderly neighbour in London, telling her that really compared to other eightysomethings wasn't it great she had a nice small house and a garden and jolly neighbours. She might have been housed in a big high rise where the lifts didn't work and she would have seen nobody.
But it never made her happier. The smile acknowledging her good fortune that I hoped to see coming to her face, never came.
And of course now I see why.
If you are lonely and old and poor and frightened of answering the door and everyone you knew in the past seems to be dead and gone and there will be no more outings to music halls, it is no help whatever to be told how much better off you are than some other unfortunate who is barricaded into her 18th floor flat from now til eternity.
THE reason why it's all so much in my mind is because I left the DART and its young passengers to go to a funeral. There were good, kind people sympathising with the bereaved family, turning up in great numbers at the Church, knowing as they did that the sheer physical presence of so many people at a time like this is a huge consolation. But as I was standing waiting to add my words I heard a lot of people telling the widow how well off she was that this hadn't happened or that hadn't happened.
I know exactly what they thought they were doing. They thought they were showing her bright chinks of light at a dark time, telling her that others were worse off than she was, and this would somehow make her grieve less.
I listened to them. "At least he had his family raised not like poor so and so." "At least he didn't have a long illness like poor somebody else." "Wasn't it great that he didn't have to go through retirement, he wasn't a man who could have faced leaving work. Look at that poor man we all know."
Maybe this is just a form of words, part of a comforting ritual. Perhaps they shouldn't be analysed down to the bone because they are intended be like a murmuring blanket of hope rather than a direct instruction to examine the lot of these even less fortunate people and count yourself somehow more lucky by comparison.
We have a friend who had a cancer diagnosis just after Christmas. Now that the shock has died down, it's agreed by everyone that she will very probably be totally cured and she herself has a marvellous positive attitude to it. She says people are constantly trying to reassure her that it's not as bad as what other people might have.
Now this she doesn't find particularly helpful because after all cancer is on the serious end of things, and you'd have to be very over sunny to say you were glad you had it rather than a lot of other things.
But last week a neighbour visiting her and trying to include as much comparative cheer as possible said, in a burst of well meaning encouragement: "Well look, it's bad, but it's not as bad as if you had a wisdom tooth." Suddenly the two of them found it hysterically funny and laughed so much that the whole ward had to be brought in on it. Now, when any of the patients are going for radium treatment someone says "Well, thank heavens it's nothing like a wisdom tooth," and they all laugh again.
SO I am personally not in favour of trying to create the feelgood factor by listing how many people there are who feel seriously bad. But am I right?
Is there a question that it might in fact be consoling to be reassured that others are worse off than we are? Does it make us feel less lonely or ugly or unlucky to think that we are not alone in being any of these things. Is part of the deep sadness of bereavement or illness or looking awful caused by thinking we are the only people in the world who feel this way?
I do consider myself luckier than a lot of people in that if I ask a question like this - just throw it out vaguely I get a response and I greatly enjoy getting letters and reading people's views . .