Struck Down by Rubeola
The first thing I’ve learned about children is that they carry disease like flea-infested vermin. They took me down within a month’s time, bestowing upon me a generous welcoming gift of measles (the culprit of my two week hiatus). Even now as I shuffle around in my bedclothes alternating my time between napping and naming each itchy blotch after a runny-nosed brat, I marvel at the resilience of the child’s body to ward off one plague after another. The boys barely slow or tire even as they burn up with fever. It seems that these young ones are forever functioning in a diseased state and, unconscious of such things as germs, think nothing of coughing or sneezing on anyone within range.
Theodore came to check on me today and assured me that the boys have stopped calling me “Monsieur Blotchy Butt” in my absence.
“Vermin!” was all I could sputter on the subject, and I took to a fit of coughing to emphasize my point and perhaps make Theodore feel guilty for exposing me to the great germ orgy.
“This is how it is for awhile,” he soothed, “until you’ve built up a resistance to disease.”
“Theodore, if I had wanted to infect myself with the plague, I could have just as easily licked a Petri dish.”
“But the Petri dish wouldn’t make you get well cards.”
“I’d prefer a nurse.”
Theodore sighed. “You need to acquire some focus, my friend. You’re making such brilliant discoveries with the children. Your work could be monumental. Perhaps it’s time you give all this skirt chasing a rest.”
“You may be right.”
Theodore looked stunned momentarily. “Ahhhhh . . . so you haven’t heard from her?”
He meant a pretty blonde I’d met at the Sorbonne. She was the kind of gorgeous that make men weak in the knees and lose all rational thought. I’d tried to impress her with details of my innovative research.
“So what exactly do you do?” she’d asked, batting her doe eyes at me.
I became flustered and found myself tongue-tied. “I . . . I, uh . . . I play with little boys.”
I hadn’t heard from her since.
I told Theodore the tragic news. Despite the fact that he thinks women have been an unnecessary distraction, he was sympathetic.
“Well, you were sick at the time. Wasn’t that the day you realized you had measles?”
“It was.”
“Well, you know what they say, ‘Girls don’t make passes at guys with gross rashes.’”
“No one says that.”
“Even so, you weren’t at your best. Your mind is clouded with fever, you look terrible, and . . .”
“What?”
“You smell like overripe cheese.”
While hardly complimentary, Theodore’s words bolstered my self esteem . . . slightly. In all likelihood it is no shortcoming of mine that repelled Marguerite.
She’s just not that into Brie.
- an excerpt taken from Child’s Play (The Satirical Thoughts of a Genius Who Doesn’t Have All the Answers), submitted to W.O.M.P. for authentication.