Baby Blues by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott for January 12, 2024

Wanda said yesterday at the doctor office different kid. Whoever was sick got better in a hurry.

A cold usually isn’t sufficient reason to keep a kid home from school. Or at least they weren’t years ago when I was in school. It might be a different story now after the pandemic.

What if you get it too Zoe, and you and Hammie have to spend a week home together?!

Zoe is overconfident about her ability to avoid the cold virus while living in the same house as 2 sick people. Did she get a hazmat outfit for Christmas?

Hammie’s teacher will thank you but your mother won’t! She’ll be stuck with him all day til he gets better.

Was that on purpose?

The cycle is continuous at our house. One of our kids brings in something from school. Me, or my wife gets it. Usually me. Then, the other child gets it. Then the other parent. Usually my wife, which is strange because she’s a stay at home mom while I work. Nowdays it seems like strep is what most kids spread. There’s a lot of them getting the flu as well this season.

Even with only adults in the house you can end up trading germs. Once hubs and a colleague were sent out of town for a conference. On the way home they were flying a plane known to this day as “the plane of death” because so many people were obviously sick with flu. So he gets home and spends another week off work, passes it to me as well and it is the sickest I have ever been with flu in my life, and then we pass it back to each other again!

Nice big hug for Wren.

I suspetc this will get even MORE common in my household after our second kid is born.

What is she hoping the teacher will do for her? extra playground time?

Is that the standard now? Out a whole week?

I remember as a kid in the 50’s, the mothers in our neighborhood having Chicken Pox, Measles, Mumps, etc. parties when one of their kids came down with the affliction and the rest of us kids were the guests of honor. Could never understand why they purposely wanted to suffer through us being sick.

And that’s how I got chicken pox.

My mother wouldn’t even let me stay home when I had a fractured skull in Grade 8.

For many years, even before the pandemic, society freaks out when one kid gets a cold, then the who school system closes down. They are afraid another kid will catch a cold. Suck it up. Get your kids away from technology and outside to play, let their bodies build up immunity to simple ailments. Gees as kids, if one kid got chicken pox , all other mothers sent their kids over to get it and “get it over with.” We all survived, and grew up healthy. Kids now are wimps, always sick. A lot of “allergies” came about because kids were not exposed to anything, their bodies cannot tolerate anything. How did peanut allergies become so common? It was almost nonexistent until kids were “protected” from everything. Now a kid catches everything because their bodies CANNOT build immunity to anything. We beat smallpox, because were were injected with cowpox, and our bodies said “Not so fast smallpox, we fought off cowpox, and we can fight off YOU” . Kids these days live in a sterile bubble. Not us.

I’m sick of coworkers loudly coughing in my presence and then declaring “don’t worry, it isn’t Covid.”

Okay, but it’s something ELSE I don’t want to catch!

this is funny! however we always stayed home with colds and my kid too but there IS an advantage to ‘toughing up’ immune systems from diseases caught at shool as children

Kids are petri dishes with legs, a cold may be OK to send them to school but a fever means stay home.

Makes the teacher happy.

Makes Hammie happy.

Wanda may be unhappy.

The kid is a smooth operator… definitely see her making a fortune in Wall Street when she grows up.

I’m sure the teacher thanks you. Your parents, maybe not so much.