Well its Saturday morning here in the UK. I should be watching The Arabian Nights or Skippy [I wish] but instead I've been video calling my Grandkids. Little Miss Moonbase has terrible chicken pox, really quite big ones, all blistery and red. Ouchies she calls them!
My old workmate was telling me that she took her own kids to a chicken pox party! I'd never heard of one but my Missus had when I told her. Sometimes I think I just went to work and was oblivious to everything else when I was a young Dad except for what was going on in our home.
I don't remember having the pox as a kid but I 'm sure I had 'cos I can recall copious amounts of Calamine lotion being blathered all over me. Pink and slimy and cold. And that was just me! ha ha.
In fact I think I had all the big childhood diseases - Chicken Pox, Measles and Mumps. I can also recall being jabbed and boosted for stuff. I still have the little depression on my upper arm like the Death Star dimple. That was the booster, a foretaste of what we all would have to deal with 55 years later with Corona!
There was also the little cube of sugar with some pink liquid on it - medicinal compound maybe - which we ate at school like a pony to protect us from Polio.
Beyond fresh milk and the nit nurse at school I can't remember any more childhood medicinal matters. My milk teeth will have fallen out at some point at home and gone to the Tooth Fairy with big pockets. We still have some of our daughter's teeth but she kept the money.
My Missus was a bronchial kid, snotting up masses of gunk. It was so bad she tells me that the family doctor advised they move from the city to the coast. They never did but eventually her nose dried up and she stopped being snotty.
Illness and childhood seem to be bound together, as long as there's not too much. Illness that is. Being poorly did have its upside though. Staying off school and presents, toys and comics!
My best sick bed present has to have been an Ideal Zeroid around 1970. I wuz 9. It was the gold one in a fish tank that doubled as a trailer. My Mum and Dad got it me in hospital when I had my nasty old appendix out. The kid next to me wasn't so lucky. His burst. I would have lent him my Zeroid but he was too ill. The kid on the other side called Vinny kept swiping my Vimto so no Zeroid for him!
Did you have any childhood diseases readers? Did you stay off school?
Very similar to you really, except I still have one of my milk teeth! Oh, and I only obtained the Zeroid you spoke of this week!
ReplyDeleteYou got a Zeroid this week! I think you need to hand over that tooth! ha ha.
DeleteThat tooth is still in my head! Retained canine. Dentist said they normally fall out by 50 at the latest, but when x rayed it turned out to have a really long root, so here I am at 60 with it still functioning!
DeleteA very relatable topic, there’s even a famous poem about toys & play during childhood illness that fits well here: ‘The Land of Counterpane’ by Robert Louis Stevenson (public domain):
ReplyDelete“When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.
And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;
And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.
I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.”
Beautiful that Charles and new to me. I had to look up what a counterpane was, a bedspread! Such a lovely idea, the land of the bedspread, where a poorly kid would be.
DeleteAlways remember the first time I stayed off school. Third grade I believe. On that day, the lesson we were supposed to learn was compass points. Until this day, every time I have to use a compass point, I recall my absence that day. And I've learned my lesson well!
ReplyDeleteHa ha. I seem to recall a lesson like that. Geography I think Arto. Great memory!
DeleteGot Measles really badly when I was 4 or 5. All I remember is that I lost my sense of taste, except for sweet things, so my mum fed me nothing but tomato soup and apple pies for a week !
ReplyDeleteOoh, sounds nasty Mish, tho' I do like tomato soup and apple pie!
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