OK, so sometimes David Letterman does something fun. Tonight the American women's hockey team announced his "top ten" list of "fun things about winning the gold medal," and it was fun. The hockey team looked great this morning when they won, they're all pretty funny and I hope it does a lot for women's hockey in this country.
I did go to work. I sat in front of the monitor most of the morning, trying hard to keep my eyes from popping out, until after lunch Elaine came over and told me that everyone thought I should go home and just recuperate. I didn't think I looked that bad. I suppose they also didn't want to catch this. I have no idea where I got it. Probably at rehearsal last week.
Once in high school our entire trombone section came down with mono. I think part of it was that that traded mouthpieces (I never traded reeds with anyone!) and partly because they were all dating each other. Basically, the fall of my junior year we didn't really have a trombone section. They all got over it, and life went on.
Sickness, sickness.
My mother was never the solicitous sort of mom you see on television. She was pretty practical. If I was sick, and it looked like I'd pass it along to kids at school, I stayed home. After I was about ten or eleven, she didn't stay home with me, but would call from her office about eleven-thirty. Not because she wanted to check up on me, but to make sure I wasn't sicker than she had thought. But no chicken soup, no mountain of pillows and lace nightgowns and Vick's Vapo-Rub. She approached sickness the way she approached everything. Practicality first.
Days when I was sick, I stayed home and watched bad game shows. Later, in high school, I'd just stay in my room and write things and listen to music. My parents were very rarely sick themselves. I think in their traveling before I was born, they probably were exposed to everything imaginable and had built up a resistance. My father never seemed to be sick or to stay home. Once he broke an ankle walking out of the house -- there was ice -- and after going to the hospital to have it set and cast, he went to work. Just like that.