Sick of Being Sick!

When I took my job at the daycare I knew I ran the risk of picking up every bug the little rugrats came in with, but I never anticipated it would be this bad. My parents joked with me that by the time I have kids of my own I’ll have absolute immunity to all illnesses, but at this point I don’t know if I’ll make it that far. I used to never get sick. Throughout my entire college career I only missed two morning classes due to a fever of 102, and even then my fever broke by noon and I was decidedly healthy enough to go to my third class of the day to give a presentation. Now it seems like I get sick every other week. I’ve already had to call in sick three times in the 3 1/2 short months I’ve worked at the daycare. 

This last week was the worst. On Monday, I heard talk of kids being out for a stomach flu and parents mentioning incidents of vomiting over the weekend. By Tuesday night I was praying to the porcelain gods with the same illness. I got sick every 20 to 50 minutes between the hours of 9pm and 3:00am...and once more at 6:00am. Needless to say I called in sick on Wednesday. As if that night of vomiting terror wasn’t enough, I spent the next two days completely wiped out in bed and on the couch. So not only am I getting sick more often, but my recovery abilities are weakening as well. I swear this job is knocking me down one illness-wielding kid at a time. At least the kids are still as cute as ever, now if only I could get them to stop sneezing on me. 

A Long Line of Good People

I’ve recently realized that I come from a long line of good people. Rather than telling you about the awesomeness that is each individual relative of mine, I’d like to share a Charlie-ism. For those of you who don’t know, Charlie is my grandfather on my dad’s side, aka the one I got my red hair and flair from. If you’d bare with me, I’d like to tell a story of his: 

Thursday morning my dad and I sat around the small circular table in my grandfather Charlie’s nook of a dining room. 

“Hey, I got a story for ya,” Charlie called from the kitchen while preparing perfectly square multigrain waffles for our breakfast.

My dad and I sipped on our Irish coffees and awaited a famous Charlie-ism that was bound to take place. 

“Have you ever heard of the wee people?” Charlie continued. 

Considering Charlie’s an 87 year old man who still refers to people from Asia as Orientals, I figured he was incorrectly referring to little people, but I didn’t stop him.

“Well when I was a boy I went to Aunt Marge’s house. Now she’s your great, great, great, great aunt.” She’s not. She’s only my great great aunt, but once again I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the Charlie-ism. 

“Aunt Marge pulled me aside and warned me about these wee people,” Charlie began as he meticulously placed a single blueberry in each waffle square. “She said ‘Charlie, you better watch out for these wee people. They come out in the early morning and at night looking for pots of gold at the end of rainbows, and if you’re not careful they’ll snatch you up.’ Now I knew there was something fishy about this story of Aunt Marge’s, so when I got a bit older I mustered up the nerve to ask Aunt Marge if she really believed in wee people. She looked me square in the eye and said ‘Oh heavens Charlie, I don’t believe in wee people! But they do exist.’” Charlie concluded with a howl of a laugh before diving into his whipped cream covered waffle. 

I can only hope that one day I’ll be telling my grandchildren ludicrous stories sprinkled with out of date (and occasionally politically incorrect) terminology. Of course, by that time I’ll be telling stories in holograph form via my hovercraft.