Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Croup...There It Is.

[Skipping the obligatory introductory pleasantries and getting down to business]

Why do parents feel the need to keep bringing their sick-ass kids out into the world to infect others like the fucking Outbreak monkey?

I know that you're trying to save up your sick days at work for that RV trip to the Wisconsin Dells this summer or your college roommate's wedding in Ohio that you got asked to be a bridesmaid for. I know that you don't want your kids cutting into your "me" time, and it's superfucking inconvenient that your day care center has rules about not allowing you to bring little [insert trendy biblical name here] there when he's running a 103 fever and spewing yellow shit out of his nose like it's an eclair.

But I want to go on the trampoline!
But guess what? Part of being a parent is sucking it up and staying the fuck home with your kid when he/she is sick.

Our son, who has been relatively germ-free for the first 18 months of his life, wound up taking an extra trip to the doctor this week because one of the parents in his gymnastics class felt that it was totally kosher to bring her hacking, wheezing daughter/granddaughter (we'll just refer to her as Patient Zero) in to join us last week.

By the end of the week, we'd been contaminated.

Fortunately, Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo and Cuba Gooding Jr. were all in town just hours later* to save the day, calling Morgan Freeman just in time to prevent the army from firebombing the entire city, and our son will be just fine in a few days now that the antiserum has been discovered.

(* — Okay, so it was just a trip to Walgreens that did it. I like to exaggerate for effect on occasion. You'll learn this.)

Anyway, this whole episode was the result of one of two things, and I'm not sure which is worse...

a) Patient Zero's parent or guardian was just thinking of herself;
b) Patient Zero's parent or guardian was thinking of someone beside herself — and she's just really that stupid.

Neither outcome would shock me.