Shoulders back. Feet flat on the floor.

Now go get a glass of water and drink it. I'll wait.

Good.

My name is Miriam McIntire. I was a nurse for forty-one years at a hospital in Knoxville, Tennessee, and for the last twenty of them I was head nurse. I retired in 1991. I have not stopped telling people what to do, and I don't intend to start now.

I finished nursing school in the spring of 1950 and married Richard McIntire that June. Richard is seventy-four. He has heard everything on this page before. He agrees with most of it.

We have three children, Frederick, Susan and Geoffrey. All grown, all employed, and all three call on Sunday, because I raised them right. We have seven grandchildren. Christa is sixteen and just got her license, and she is going to wear her seat belt every single time, because her grandmother will find out.

In the early fifties I nursed children in iron lungs on the polio ward. Then the vaccine came in 1955, and year by year there were fewer of them, until there were none. So don't you tell me shots don't work. I was there.

Tuesdays and Thursdays at nine I go to water aerobics at the community pool. There are fourteen of us. I am not the instructor. I have been reminded of that twice. I went this morning, and the water was cold, and I went in anyway, and so should you.

Forty-one years taught me that most people know perfectly well what they ought to do. They just need somebody to say it out loud and mean it. Consider it said. I mean every word, and I'd say the same to my own.

Got a question? Write to me. I answer every letter. If it's a medical question, I'll tell you to ask your doctor, and then I'll tell you what I think.

[email protected]

My grandson Jonathon, who is twelve, built this page for me. He says it needs pictures. I said it needs people to read it. We compromised on the heart.