If I give away a kidney, will it make me a better person?
It’s great giving blood when you’re O negative. I do absolutely nothing to produce this stuff, I don’t even drink water very often, and yet I have these constant, positive interactions with the donation people. Every phone call starts with a fiveminute introduction about how great I am. Every email has a heartwarming story about someone who needed O negative, and then got it, and now they’re alive, because of me. Sometimes they’ll randomly send me a badge or a plastic bracelet saying “first responder” on it, which makes me sound like a hero who ran, didn’t walk, towards an emergency, as opposed to what I am: a person who goes into town once every four months for 20 minutes of no-bigdeal and gets given a pint of squash and an orange Club at the end of it. I love it. Last year, they asked me to go in on Boxing Day, and I said no, don’t be daft, it’s Boxing Day, and I still came away from that feeling like a king.
Then, this morning, I got an email with a slightly different ask: blood is great and all, but have you ever heard of a living organ donation? For instance, would you like to give away a kidney? It was a bit of a gear shift, somewhere in the region of: “Thank you for your direct debit of five quid a month, would you like to give us your house?” But I gave it due consideration. I know three people with only one kidney: one because she was born with a kidney problem; one gave his to his sister; one, I don’t know what happened to hers – it turns out this is the kind of thing you have to wait to be told.
None of them are any less healthy than me, but all of them, I’m hazarding, have healthier lifestyles. It could be that lacking a kidney encourages you to take better care of your other one, and while you’re there, the rest of your organs. Or it could be there’s an adaptation effect, similar to the way having poor eyesight
can make your hearing really good. Or – this might be an extremely long shot – to think that, post-organ donation, I’d be as high-functioning as my singlekidneyed associates, except my morals, sheesh: they’d be off the charts.
You should never start thinking about extravagantly pro-social behaviour, particularly not on a Monday morning. Engage with one act of lifechanging generosity that you don’t intend to do, and your thoughts slide inexorably to all the other things – smaller, easier, less consequential things – that you also don’t do. I haven’t volunteered for anything since Covid, and that was only because I was bored. I only go on a third of the protests I agree with, and there are probably more that I would agree with, if I engaged. I interviewed a nurse on strike once, who said in passing that people in the north-west of England know never to turn up to a picket line empty-handed; I resolved, any time I saw a picket line after that, to take some sandwiches, and I have never, ever done that. I’ve never done what they call an “arrestable action” on a demonstration, despite having been persuaded ages ago that the only thing that’s going to change the world’s course on the climate crisis is mass civil disobedience. I don’t give enough away. I see a graph about child poverty, get angry for a while, then file it at the back of my mind. It is terrifying to consider the amount of time, energy and money I could share, for the concrete or future benefit of others, before I got to actual body parts. Terrifying, but maybe also useful and galvanising; something to work with, a break from the usual crushing sense of impotence.
Anyway, cheers, donation services, another great interaction: you can’thave a kidney, but I am going to live a better life, and maybe, down the line, give you some platelets.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
thing made for children before or since, deftly employing humour to lightly tread through heavy issues – those first forays into romance (chiefly Lynda and charismatic reporter Spike), the difficulties of adolescent friendship, knowing when taking a stand is worth the risk. To deliver that sort of advice while keeping your audience in stitches is no small feat.
One of the reasons, sheer nostalgia aside, that I wanted to share older film and telly with the kids was an attempt to resist presentism – the paradoxical mindset that our present historical moment is not only unique, but also the standard by which every other moment must be judged.
Part of this was simple aesthetics. I had been spooked by reports that millennials weren’t watching old films. Parent friends said their kids – raised on the slick movement and bright colours of HD video – found older movies and series offputtingly “grainy” or “brown”. It’s an approach to viewing that threatens to seal the cinematic canon around the turn of the century.
But the main value in digging through that canon is to give context and map change. It’s easy to despair at the state of the world when you can’t see change in action. Watching
the Bond films from 1962-87 over the summer holidays was like watching decades of social progress on fast forward. But it was possible to enjoy Goldfinger while still discussing its attitudes to women and why much of our hero’s behaviour is no longer acceptable.
It’s more awkward when you find yourself caught out by your own outdated attitudes. There’s no getting around the fact that 80s films – even those aimed at children – can be unpredictable and rife with sleaze. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve felt ambushed by movies I carefully chose for the kids. Movies I remembered as cosy havens of innocence. The surprise F word in Big springs to mind, as does the spectral oral sex scene in Ghostbusters. Drop Dead Fred, it turns out, isn’t actually a kids’ film. And my year three teacher showing our class Splash now feels like a reportable offence.
Resisting presentism can also bring a sense of loss. One of the revelations revisiting Press Gang is how unpolished the kids look. The diverse cast is refreshingly free of designer labels and highly gendered clobber. It’s only graphic designer Sam (Gabrielle Anwar) who stands out with her Mean Girl stylings and conspicuous beauty regime.
She feels like a grim portent of the sort of uber-worldly teens who would dominate pop culture across the next few decades.
That said, I am wary of surrendering to nostalgia to the extent that it alienates our kids from their own present. There’s an infamous Onion article about a hipster dad whose media collection guarantees his daughter will have nothing in common with her peers. Yes, our girls have (as yet) few friends to discuss The Goonies or Press Gang with, but anecdotal evidence suggests kids raised by gen X parents tend to be surprisingly well-versed in The NeverEnding Story and Back to the Future.
The next generation will find their own culture, just as we found ours. I try to see my parental nostalgia trips as bridging gaps and broadening the canvas into places Netflix or Disney+ won’t take them. Helping kids detach from the zeitgeist feels increasingly important in our algorithmic age. Branching out is hard when there’s always more of what you already love.
Not every childhood fave stands up, of course. And, yes, there is always much mirth to be found in dated visual effects. But in the end it’s not the quality of viewing that matters so much as the sharing. I’m enjoying the sense of building a shared, idiosyncratic family culture, creating the sort of references and in-jokes that most families (and cults, probably) thrive upon.
I hope, more than anything, that’s what they’ll remember when – in a very, very distant future – they first introduce their own offspring to Spike and Lynda.
• Myke Bartlett is a writer and critic
Not every childhood fave stands up, of course. And, yes, there is always much mirth to be found in dated visual effects