The More Things Change, The More Germs Stay the Same

In 2014 — that's a whole-ass decade ago, y'all — I wrote the following on this very blog:

"There are certain things that I can always count on happening. The sun will rise and set, the moon will wax and wane, and my kids will bring home every germ within a twenty-mile radius during the first few weeks of school. It's all inevitable."

Colin would've been in, like, 4th grade at that time, which means Cameron would have been a first-grader and Coby a Kindergartner (and Corbin would've been just two years old, still crappin' pants and takin' names at home). They are a whole lot older now, so a bunch of things have changed around these parts since then. But guess what hasn't changed, not even one iota?

That's right: my children being complete and utter paragons of picture-perfect health all summer, then going back to school (or in Colin's case, to work) and dragging home ALL THE GERMS. Not only that, but there's a lovely thing called Covid to add to the cesspool these days, which wasn't even a thing in 2014!

That's what Cameron had a couple weeks ago — the 'Rona. Fast forward to this week, when Colin spent his entire day off and had to call off work the next day because he was hacking up a lung. He tested negative for Covid, thankfully, but that didn't stop me from following him from room to room with a canister of Clorox wipes.

Unfortunately, that didn't stop the germs, because by 8:58 this morning — which has to be some kind of record, I swear — I was heading to pick up my sick sophomore, Coby, from school. (Which I had to get out of my pajamas to do, so I guess that's another thing that hasn't changed much. Ha!) He is currently quarantined to his bedroom ... where I think I hear a video game, grr, but I'm not trying to head in there and check. I do hear the occasional cough through his bedroom door, but it could just be for effect.

Either way, we haven't gone a week since school started a month ago without somebody coughing, sneezing, wheezing, or snotting. On the bright side, they are well past the age of wiping their noses on me; at one point I used to worry about feeling like a human Kleenex for the rest of my life, but now my clothes are blessedly devoid of dried snot smears. And since I can barely get them to come out of their rooms lately, let alone hang out in the same room with me for more than five minutes at a time, no one is coughing directly into my face. 

But you know what I do have on my hands that may just be worse than germs?

Man-colds. Times four. Times five, if you count Curtis.

... Hmm. Suddenly a few snot smears don't actually sound that bad.