A retired schoolteacher in reading glasses on a beaded chain gestures emphatically at a kitchen table covered in newspaper clippings and a well-worn thesaurus, a tabby cat watching from a nearby chair. Credit: Daniel Voss for The New York Time5
A retired schoolteacher in reading glasses on a beaded chain gestures emphatically at a kitchen table covered in newspaper clippings and a well-worn thesaurus, a tabby cat watching from a nearby chair. Credit: Daniel Voss for The New York Time5

What’s All This Fuss?

What’s all this fuss I keep hearing about “bury ’em enema”?

YONKERS, N.Y. — I was sitting in my kitchen on Tuesday morning, reading the paper as I do every morning because I believe an informed citizenry is the only thing standing between this country and total chaos, when I came across an article about the millions of Americans who are apparently undergoing something called a “bury ’em enemy” procedure each year. In hospitals. With doctors present.

I put the paper down and looked at Mr. Buttons, and Mr. Buttons looked at me, and I will tell you that neither one of us could believe what we had just read.

Let me be very clear about what I am saying. The American medical establishment — the same people we trust with our children, our elderly, and our most vulnerable citizens — is apparently in the business of burying people’s enemies. On a table. Under fluorescent lighting. With a tube. I do not know what the tube is for and I do not want to know, because whatever it is for, it is not the point. The point is that we have, as a society, decided that the appropriate way to deal with one’s adversaries is to take them to a hospital and have a doctor bury them, and nobody — not the surgeon general, not the AMA, not a single member of Congress — has stood up and said, “Excuse me, but this is not what medicine is for.”

As a thirty-one-year veteran of the Yonkers public school system, I spent three decades teaching children that when you have a conflict with someone, you use your words. You do not bury them. You do not even threaten to bury them. You sit down, you look the other person in the eye, and you say, “I hear what you are saying, and I disagree, but I respect you as a person.” That is what I taught every child who came through Room 14 at P.S. 16, and I would like to think that not a single one of them grew up to schedule a bury-em-enemy appointment at Mount Sinai.

And yet here we are. According to the article, these procedures are covered by most insurance plans. Covered! By insurance! Your tax dollars and mine are subsidizing the burial of enemies. I called my nephew, Kevin, to ask whether his insurance covered enemy burial, and he said, “Aunt Emily, please stop calling me about the newspaper,” which I took as a yes. The shame was obvious in his voice.

What disturbs me most is the casual way people discuss it, as though having your enemies buried is as routine as a teeth cleaning. I heard a woman on the bus yesterday say she had one scheduled for Thursday and she “wasn’t looking forward to it but her doctor said it was time.” Time! Time for what? Time to bury your enemies in a medical facility? What happened to forgiveness? What happened to turning the other cheek? What happened to writing a firm but civil letter, which is what I have always done and which has served me very well, except for the time the principal called it “borderline threatening,” which I maintain was a misreading of my tone?

I would like to see this country get back to a place where we resolve our differences like adults. If you have an enemy, talk to them. Invite them to dinner. Send them a card. Do not — and I cannot believe I have to say this — do not take them to a gastroenterologist and have them buried. The children are watching, and they deserve better.

UPDATE: It has been brought to Ms. Nutella’s attention that a “barium enema” is a diagnostic imaging procedure in which a contrast agent is introduced into the lower gastrointestinal tract to allow for X-ray visualization of the colon and rectum. It does not involve burying anyone’s enemies. Ms. Nutella would like to clarify that she fully supports diagnostic medicine and considers the matter closed. She adds that “barium” and “bury ’em” sound “exactly the same” and that this is, if anything, a failure of the medical profession to name its procedures more clearly. — Ed.