Disappointment

I can still remember walking up to the local elementary school the summer before kindergarten. I can remember standing nervously in line with the other small children . My Grandma Sally held my hand and listened to me chatter.

I was getting my shots to enter school. I was going to be a big kid.

I hated the shot in my arm. They were still using the Vax gun and my arm hurt. I did like the polio vaccine on the sugar cube, though. They were smart and gave that one last. It’s hard to be hysterical with a sugar cube in your mouth. That was the extent to which I was traumatized.

At age five I got a nifty scar to show off on the playground and pink stuff on a sugar cube. It was a small but significant right of passage. I was now going to school. I was a big kid.

My dad had polio when he was a boy. He was bed-bound for months and ended up with post -polio syndrome in latter years. You can be damn sure my brother and I got our shots. They were not going to have to worry their children would become disabled or die from the now preventable diseases. No more quarantined homes to prevent the spread. Look how far medicine had advanced! Wasn’t it wonderful!

My kids received their shots. We have some great family stories about my oldest and the number of adults it took to hold her still. It was four grown men. She was four years old and was very brave-until she wasn’t.

I never worried any of my children would become disabled, disfigured or die of a preventable disease. It didn’t cross my mind, not even once. That fear was relegated to the History books. They had received their shots.

What vaccines represent to me is freedom; freedom from fear. It is no longer a perfect freedom because of Delta (that’s a discussion for later.) It is freedom from serious illness and death even with Delta. I have my shots. Every member of our extended family aged twelve and over have theirs.

Freedom.

I do regret to inform you not one of us is magnetic (damn, that might have been handy in the right circumstances – or really annoying in others). No genetic material appears to be changed.within. No one is tracking anyone. There have been no thoughts put into any our heads. Unlike my shots at age five, everyone is completely devoid of any mark whatsoever. Not one of us worship the Beast.

I am extremely disappointed.