Genii Weblog

Partying with the pandemic

Sun 14 Jun 2009, 10:34 PM



by Ben Langhinrichs
On Friday night, my 13 year old son had a party.  In days gone by, we would have called it a sleep over, but sleep was not either intended or had that night.  Instead, they played video games, ran around outside, and generally proved the widely believed theory that teenage males have more energy than brains.  But even teenage males have to take breaks, and as they all gathered around our fire pit for s'mores, they got to talking.  One boy asked another why it was that he had not been there for the last few days of school.  The response was not one calculated to warm a parent's heart.

"I was out with the flu... probably the swine flu."

Now, in some other community at some other time, this might have been the product of an overactive imagination, but Shaker Heights Middle School, my son's school, is pretty much the local epicenter of the newly declared pandemic, H1N1 influenza, better known as "swine flu".  Of the 21 confirmed cases in Ohio, seven are at my son's school.  My son's friend is one of the unconfirmed, but widely suspected cases.

I guess if you hear coughing from the general direction of this blog, you will know that we have been partying with the pandemic.  Wish us luck as we wait and see.

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