Jun 03, 2009 - 04:30 AM
By Neil Crone
I am baffled by the press the swine flu has been getting. I frankly don't get it. In my house, anyway, there seem to be far more pressing health issues at hand. I don't know if it's our lifestyle, bad genes or the fact that our home is built on top of the burial grounds of several indigenous peoples, the lost Ark of the Covenant and quite possibly the Shroud of Keswick, but for whatever reason, we are plagued by illness.
Please, if you're reading this and you have the means, send money ... my children are suffering. Yours could be next. I'm not sure how virulent this thing is.
My 17 year old was the first to be afflicted and seems to have been the hardest hit. For starters, I think he is going blind. I asked him to mow the lawn the other day and he did. I saw him out there doing it. And yet when I walked outside afterwards, I could see huge swaths of uncut grass. Strips of missed areas running down the lawn like swimming lane markers. And he never even told me he was having trouble. The brave little soul.
Furthermore, this youngster must have some kind of voracious intestinal parasite. I see my son eating and drinking. All the time. Some days it seems like that's all the child does. I'm buying so much milk I'm thinking of applying for a quota. And yet, in spite of this astronomical calorie intake, the boy's pants keep falling further and further down his butt. What kind of malevolent, silent virus is at work there? I'm beside myself.
And it's spreading. The younger son has developed a particularly frightening condition. Since starting high school he is prone to slipping into what appears to be some sort of coma just after showering and before getting dressed. Sometimes an hour will pass in this condition. His mother and I can yell and scream his name until the cows come home, but it seems only the smell of bacon and eggs will snap him out of it. Remarkable.
I should have seen it coming, I suppose. Prior to these episodes, both boys were exhibiting strange behaviour. For some odd reason, between the hours of 7 in the morning, when they are roused from bed, and 8:15, when we leave for school, they had become stricken with a strange malady that rendered them incapable of telling time. Poor buggers.
And there has been a host of other minor, but equally perplexing, maladies. Judging from the condition of anything within three feet of the toilet, one or both of them is suffering terrible vertigo when urinating. Also, one glance into the clothing minefields that pass for their rooms, will tell you that they have also been stricken with some kind of spinal fusion that has made it nearly impossible for them to bend over and pick anything up.
And of course, they are both tragic victims of seemingly irreparable hearing loss. Their mother and I sometimes have to repeat ourselves many, many times. And they are so young. It's heartbreaking.
Surely we can't be the only ones experiencing this. If you're the parent of teens and you've seen these kinds of symptoms, then we need to talk. We'll never find a cure if we don't share our concerns. Maybe we could start by sharing them at a nice restaurant, some place, perhaps, where they don't allow kids.
Durham resident Neil Crone, actor-comic-writer, saves many of his best lines for his columns.
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