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Show Mothers should never catch the Flu They haven't time to enjoy it anyway PAROWAN - The flu season is upon us, and it sounds like a travelog. Hong Kong, Russian, Asian and the old faithful kind we all have every year, affectionately af-fectionately called "The creeping crud." Whatever you call it, it always adds up to one thing. A lot of time in the bathroom and a lot of profits for the drug stores. The TV ads have tried to help us, I mean they advertise; ad-vertise; 1 a cure for everything; runnv nose, dry nose, clogged sinuses or drippy ones, headaches, backache, sore throat, sluggish kidneys, occasional irregularity, or ring around the collar. Your doctor will tell you to stay in bed, get plenty of rest and drink fluids. Well, that's great if your a 10 year old kid with a TV, nothing is too good for mamas little darlings, new games, hamburgers, and pizza 3 times a day and the right to whine a little and demand special privileges. We mothers are all so sure that the flu will turn to pneumonia, bone cancer, or some other horrible thing, so we'll give them anything if they'll just recover. But when Mom gets sick it's a very different story. No one really worries about her, usually because no one notices she's ill. Mothers don't have time to be lying around. Any mother who has attepted to stay in bed in the morning knows that the sounds of dishes crashing and kids fighting will drag her from the bed, or if the little ones are under two they jump up and down on the bed with their wet diapers dragging. Older kids will use the old quilt gimmick "I would get ready if "someone" hadn't lost my books and my sox" and "It's allright I'll just go without any breakfast, my stomach will hurt all morning but it's OK." Then Mom is up and the rat race takes over, the flu has to take second place to dishes, spilled cereal, dirty gym clothes that have to be ready by noon, changing diapers, fishing little fingers out of the toilet bowl and rewiding the toilet paper. There is one more problem I hesitate to mention but it seems like whenever a mommy gets sick, daddy is suddenly sicker, so we just as well forget it, by the time we get through the day and have a chance to pile into bed at night we are so tired we forget all about the flu and enjoy a good night's sleep. So what if the thermometer ther-mometer says 102 degrees, we'll think about that tomorrow if we have time. By .Mary Gae Evans |