diseases of our youth

 I don't remember the flu so much as I remember the rites of passage for kids of the day.  Measles, German measles, chicken pox, mumps.

Some kid up the street, or maybe it was you, would get it and then most of the neighborhood.  It was like no big deal, you'd be laid up for a week not feeling very well, but sleeping a lot so the time passed quickly, and there was this: no school.

For measles, and usually the rest, the room was dark.  I used to sneak a comic book by the window and pull the shade aside.  Later when it was discovered that I needed glasses, that was deemed the cause, my own bad behavior six years earlier.

But not only did you get to stay out of school but your wishes became commands.  "Oh Kenny, please eat something."  "I don't feel hungry."  "Please, anything."  "Well, maybe I could eat a bowl of grated cheese."  And there it was.  So great.  Probably Velveeta, but Velveeta was just fine with me at that age.

Poor Mom, washing, ironing, cooking, cleaning, and now a kid in bed that had to be catered to.  But that's the way it worked back in the days of Father Knows Best.

On the darker side there was polio.  Those dreadful iron lungs.   You were supposed to stay away from the beach, but we went there anyway.  It never came to Homan Avenue.  And then this guy Salk discovered a vaccine.  Big hero.

There was tuberculosis and smallpox too.  Their vaccine left a little scar on your left arm.  Going to check on my arm this morning after my shower.  I remember us being marched from the classroom into some room by the office and there was somebody with a white coat dunking a syringe into some jar.  We pulled up our sleeves and lined up.  I was not a burly lad, but I was not afraid of the needle like some kids were.  Sock it to me I proclaimed boldly baring my arm, but even then the hot babes were not impressed.

Anyway, even though those sicknesses were not that bad, they did take up easily a month of your life, not to mention the stress on Mom grating all that Velveeta, and sometimes kids did die.  They have all virtually disappeared from the USA and that is a mark of progress like washers and dryers and automatic transmissions, but now we have those damned anti vaxxers.  But I won't get into that now.  I am going to pop into the shower and scrutinize my left arm.