Sick In the Summer

Is there anything worse than being sick? Yes, there is - being sick in the summer. We’re all kind of used to getting sick in the dead of winter, but being sick at the height of summer is just wrong. Summer is supposed to be long, lazy days of friends, fun, and games. It’s supposed to be a time to relax and chill out, not have the chills. So when my son recently was sick for a few days, I really felt for him.

Luckily for him, my wife and I weren’t like my Mom and didn’t make him stay inside for a couple of extra days just to make sure he was truly better. Back when I was growing up, Mom always made us stay in and do next-to-nothing for an extra day after being sick. I don’t really know if it was make sure we were no longer sick or if it was just a deterrent to faking sickness so we could miss a day of school (of course, I never did that!). Either way, I didn’t want to have to stay in the house any longer than I had to, especially in the summer.

Who would want to miss a couple of days of wiffle ball, playing catch, riding bikes, and chasing the ice cream man for a freebie? Certainly not me or any of my old friends. Even on those sauna-like August days when we just sat under a tree and read our comic books or Mad magazine while listening to our AM transistor radios, it was so much better than being cooped up in the house. As you can probably guess, growing up in a family of nine, we had no air conditioners in the house. That is, unless you consider opening up the windows and turning on the big blue fan in the living room air conditioning. I really didn’t care for staying inside.

I remember one summer when I was about 10 years old, I had a headache and was really hot, so I told my Mom. She took my temperature and it turned out that I had a fever. Mom gave me some aspirin (St. Joseph’s aspirin for children, chewable and supposedly orange flavored - blah) and made me go lie on my bed and read so that I would get better quicker. I wasn’t supposed to do anything outside of that bed in my room. While I laid there staring up at the ceiling, contemplating how to get out of the mess I got myself into, I could hear the kids in the neighborhood outside, running around, and doing what I wanted to be doing. I don’t know which made me feel worse, having a fever or hearing my friends having a great time outside.

At some point I fell asleep and woke up a few hours later feeling much better, so I went and told Mom that I was ready to go outside. She politely told me that I still needed to rest, and that I needed to stay in the house. There was no argument, no trying to convince her I was okay, and no chance I was getting out of the house. Maybe, she said, I could go out the next day if kept getting better. Miracle of miracles, I was better the next day. There was absolutely no way I was going to tell her I didn’t feel anything but wonderful. I was going out and I wasn’t going to miss another precious day of vacation. Ah, but Mom had other ideas and I had to stay in another day, “just to make sure.” If I ever got sick in the summer again, I don’t remember telling Mom, because that meant multiple lost days of being outside with friends.

So my son got over whatever he had after a few days and went back to his normal life; work, friends, being out of the house, and enjoying the summer. The amazing part was that this all happened without being forced to stay in the house, up in his room, for one extra day. I wish I could have had that when I was a kid, whether I got sick in the winter, spring, summer, or fall. But like I said, there’s nothing worse than being sick in the summer.

Get Out of the Way!

Something is wrong in the animal world. It may not be happening everywhere, but at least in my neighborhood it is. It seems that animals are not afraid of us humans like they used to be. Birds, for example, are no longer afraid of people. It used to be if you walked out of your house, they would fly away. Now you walk out of your house and maybe they’ll stop what they’re doing and look at you. If you walk toward them you get some attention, but they’re still not moving. Only when you get right near them do they fly away.

Driving is even worse with birds. It used to be that once a bird could see you coming down the road, they would fly away. Now you’re coming at them at 45 miles per hour and they don’t even blink an eye. You get about 25 feet away and maybe they hop off to the side a little, but not fly. You get about 10 feet away and it’s like they’re playing chicken – is the human going to stop before I need to fly? I have been driving at times like this when I’ve actually said “Fly!” out loud, sometimes more than once. When they finally fly up out of the road their little legs are still dangling when they pass over the windshield to safety. That’s how close they are to getting hit; their landing gear isn’t even up yet. What’s with the hopping in the road? If I could fly, I wouldn’t be hopping. Just get out of the way.

The same thing has happened with other animals, too, not just birds. Cats, squirrels, possum and critters you only see at night, none of them get out of the way until the very last minute.  I’m not about to crash my car to avoid one of these guys, and I have hit a squirrel before, but why the defiance and refusal to get out of the road?

When we were kids, we played sports in the street. We played whiffle ball, street hockey, kick ball, catch, pretty much anything in the street in front of my house. We didn’t get a significant amount of traffic on our street, mostly just the people who lived on the street and the occasional visitors. My parents had always told us to not only get out of the road when a car was coming, but to actually get onto the sidewalk. On our street, both sides had sidewalks. When we were younger, up to about 10 years old, we did what they had told us and got onto the sidewalk when a car came. However, as we got older we started just moving to the side of the street and not onto the sidewalk. This made some people slow down more than they normally would have, which sometimes got us upset because they were holding up our game.

As we got to our teen years, we got bolder (or more stupid if you prefer). When we were playing and someone yelled “Car coming”, if we were in the middle of a play, we just kept on playing. Sometimes we didn’t move until the people were pretty close to us or until they beeped their horn. Some people smiled and waved once we finally got out of the road and let them pass, others scowled at us like we were criminals in a police lineup. To get back at those people when we were playing street hockey, we’d pass the ball under the car to the other side as they went by. We thought this was hilarious and that we were pretty cool when the ball made it to the other side without getting run over. That is, until someone gave the ball too much lift and it hit the side of the car. Needless to say, the driver was not at all happy with us and told us they were going to speak to our parents about the incident. Whether they did or not I really don’t know. However, we were more careful after that…for about a week, and then we went back to our normal routine.   

A thought recently came to me out of nowhere after one of these defiant bird encounters. Maybe those birds that won’t fly, those squirrels that won’t run and the other animals that won’t get out of the road, are teenagers. They’ve gotten bolder, so when one of their buddies yells “Car coming!” in their language, they just keep on doing what they’re doing. Maybe they’re all sitting there laughing at us, thinking how cool they are that they just missed being hit. Or maybe they’re thinking how hilarious it is that they made someone stomp on the brakes and perhaps swerve out of their way. Perhaps, as in the human world, no one in the animal world wants some old guy in a car holding up the game. Even if that game is a game of chicken.