32 — Wednesday, November 26, 1997°- North Shore News

Family fi

Shannon Humphreys
Contributing Colunnist

FLU Season in Full
Swing reads a headline
in a recent newspaper.

They should finish thar
sentence with, Mothers, Drop
Everything!

There is nothing worse
than the phone call from the
school nurse telling you your
child has to be picked up
because he’s sick.

For most of us that dread-
ed call heralds the onset of
some major disruption to
household order.

It starts with one kid get-
ting sick. In our house, the
Dad goes to work as usual,
and the Mother rearranges
her entire life to take care of
the little patient.

The ailing child lies in
front of the TV all day
watching Disney movies and
eating JeH-O, whi
promptly barfs back up into a
plastic ice cream bucket tied
with string around his neck.

Within twenty-four hours
another kid succumbs to the
bug.

Now there are pwo pasty-
faced victims flopped out on
the chestertield, and the plas-
tic buckets have to be labeled
with their names for fear
someone barfs into the other
guy’s bucket. .

| The children, amazingly,
have just enough energy to
fight over which TV station
they are watching, and who is
the sicker of the two.

By the time the third kid
gets sick, the first one is bet-
ter and can go back to
school. However, it’s right
about this time that the
biggest kid of all succumbs:
the husband.

- Jn our family we have a
name for the strain of the
bug that the husband gets;
we call it €Man’s Sick. Ir is,
according to my husband, tar
worse than any other version
of the bug that the rest us
a When the husband gets
sick he typically mopes about,
heaving enormous sighs and
holding his stomach.

He is quick to relinquish
control of his bodily func-
tions and his snoring gets
much louder. He tosses and
turns all night and canner
sleep, so neither can the wife.

The husband gets so sick
that he cannot walk the dog,
drive the kids, or take the ~
garbage out. He says things
like: “This time it’s really
bad” and “Oh the pain, oh
the pain.”

The only thing that makes
my husband feel any better
when he has éMan’s Sick is
the Sports Channel on TV,

swrvhich he watches when he is
awake, moaning in misery,
but only during commercials.

The good thing abour

éMan’ k is that it usually
only lasts a day or two, as the
husband can’t hack fighting
with the other children over

~~" WF which channel the TV is

switched to.

Mothers don't get sick
with the bug until everyone
else in the family has had it.

@.- By then, the family i is out of

aspirins and tissue, and the
fragile thread holding i impor-
tant routines in place is dan-
gerously weak.

Once, a few years ago, |
got really sick, ft was so bad
it might even have been

« €Man’s Sick.

Thad to go to bed for a
couple of days, and when I
did, the house fell apart.

q

No one turned on the
dishwasher, loads of laundry
and children went unwashed,

° Baffle box

2 160% cotton cover

costumes were suddenly
needed for the school play,
parents had to be driven to
the airport, and the dog got
into a neighbor's garbage and
threw up on the living room
floor.

A friend got depressed
and wanted to be cheered
the milk soured because it
was left out on the counter,
someone flushed a bar of
soap down the toilet and it
plugged, and my boss needed
an important report right

up,

construction

e Full 10-year we rarrainly

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oe

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ueen

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away.

When I finally got up it
took me a whole week to get
things back to normal.

nce then [ haven't been
sick. It’s not that am
stronger or healthier than the
rest of my family, it’s that
getting sick is just too darn
much work for me.

Maybe when the kids are
grown up and I have a little
more time ...

— Shannon Humphreys is
a West Vancouver writer.

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