Good Old Golden Flu Days

Three hundred and thirty thousand kids in the United States are getting a little extra spring vacation while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tried to figure out the best advice to give schools with students who have been diagnosed with Swine Flu. They had been recommending closing schools for up to two weeks while the virus runs its course. Instead, they think that maybe asking that the infected kids stay home and let everyone else finish up the year.
My principal is of two minds on this particular subject: On the one hand, we have just begun our rather tumultuous period of standardized testing, and after months of preparation, closing school now would steal away a lot of our momentum. Conversely, if the disease could wait its turn and infect our students next week, then it would serve as a nice respite from filling in all those bubbles with a number two pencil. Timing is everything.
The teachers are maintaining a positive outlook, but most of us flinch every time we hear a kid sneeze, and we are being a lot more liberal with our hand sanitizer. We all know that we spend each day wading through a petri dish, and if there's swine flu out there, we're a pretty sure bet to get our share. At least that's what was going through my mind Sunday night.
I woke up with a start. My stomach was doing a triple gainer, and I lurched into the bathroom in search of Pepto Bismol. Without waking the rest of my family, I began to diagnose my symptoms and drew the obvious conclusion. Then I considered an alternative. I made a return visit to my son's elementary school for their annual Pancake Breakfast. Though I am not much of a breakfast eater on any given day, I chose to work out my alumni hunger on the six years that I had been grilling sausage and flipping pancakes all in one morning. This year they had bacon. As is my way, I created a canape out of a piece of bacon wrapped around a pat of butter. For the amusement of others, I ate it. And when one of the other dads came out of the kitchen feeling that he had missed something spectacular, I repeated the stunt for him. For this I was awarded the princely sum of one American dollar.
Did I have the swine flu? No. But now feel comfortable giving kids advice on how to avoid that late-night queasy feeling: If you want to stay healthy, stay far away from the bacon-wrapped butter.