Ellyn Sells Out
or
That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do
This is another moment at which I wish I knew how to post an image. I have the perfect picture for my Christmas Card.
Many people use their annual Christmas greeting to boast of another year of accomplishment and happiness. Right now I feel like s**t. The best picture for my card (if I’m talking self-expression and not what I wish for the recipient....) is Ivan Albright’s That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do. This picture has been floating through my mind the past couple of days.

I had the opportunity to participate in a consumer focus group on Monday. When I agreed to do this, I saw it as a heaven sent gift to help provide some gifts for the kids for Christmas. The timing was perfect and receiving $75 for 90 minutes spent talking about myself is hardly work. The group was to be about “health care options.” As the session commenced, we were told that we would be specifically discussing Lake Forest Hospital and their future advertising strategies. And we were told that behind the ‘mirror’ sat representatives of Lake Forest Hospital. The same abortion providing hospital that I had been praying in front of just 8 days earlier.

The fun thing about focus group participation is being told that you should be totally honest. There is no need to obfuscate or dodge issues. It is one’s real opinion that is being bought.

The whole thrust of this group was to assess local residents’ perceptions of Lake Forest Hospital. I was waiting for just the right moment to interject my opinion that there is no way to disguise or beautify the fact that babies are killed at Lake Forest Hospital. It sure would have been easy. There was the talk of the hospital as a ‘country club,’ as an extremely pleasant place to give birth, as the baby hospital. God forgive me, I didn’t say a word.

I talked about how they seem short staffed, how the doctors in the mock-up ad looked like snarky lounge-lizzards, how reassuring it is that they have such great affiliations with local teaching hospitals. But I didn’t say the most important thing. It probably wouldn’t have made a difference. It probably would have had a deadly effect on the ebullient atmosphere of the group. But it would have been true. “Some members of the community find the fact that babies are murdered at Lake Forest Hospital to be a real negative thing.”

Maybe the reason I was called for this group wasn’t divine intervention to help me scrape up ready cash. Maybe I was there to tell the truth. And I didn’t.

I just never said it. It’s not like it didn’t occur to me until I was in the middle of Target spending what amounts to ‘blood money.’ I just kept waiting for the right moment. That which I should have done I did not do. And then I took the money and ran.........