The Four O'Clock Flu
When we're this far gone, what's one more day out of school?
“Hey Dad”, she proclaimed at the side of my bed.
I opened one eye to check the time: 7:22. Not too bad, we have an hour until the school bus.
“Yes?” I asked.
“I’m all sniffly”, she told me. “Sniffly?”, I asked. “Yeah, sniffly”, she replied.
That conversation didn’t really clear things up at all, but after some further investigation it seems the child has a bit of a cold and the sniffles.
She went downstairs all bundled up in her fuzzy knee-high socks and matching pink robe and flopped under a blanket on the sofa, while I made coffee and figured out what day it was.
Usually when she does this she’s all chatter and energy after a good night’s sleep and this morning she looked wee bit pale and was pretty quiet so I asked if she was sick.
“I’m medium” she told me.
That didn’t help with the diagnosis much. Then she told me that groundhogs make their own bathrooms underground. I went to get the thermometer to make sure she didn’t have a fever.
No fever. But she just didn’t have any energy to get off the couch so BW called it. She’s staying home.
Great.
I will not tell you how much screen time she had. It was a lot and let’s leave it at that.
Calling out sick is a tricky thing - young or old. Because it’s hard to know just how sick we’re talking about when it comes to having a common cold in February which is pretty…common.
Today we erred on the side of caution because the teacher doesn’t need a snot nosed kid in her class all day and if it did go sideways, we have to go pick her up and bring her home and that’s almost a bigger pain than just keeping her at home.
Later tonight she was asking for a tissue and she asked where and what are boogers?
I’m not a doctor and I may have the details wrong but I explained the bloggers are dirt that your body doesn’t want to go into your lungs and your nose stops it from going that far. 1
She looked up at me with a well-used tissue in her hand and you could see the light bulb in her head light up - and then she says to me:
“So thats why we shouldn’t eat our boogers - they are dirt!”
“Exactly!”, I replied.
Now, go to bed. Tomorrow is a school day for sure.
TH and Co.
I tried.
I love her brain!