Throughout my life, I've been blessed with the ability to remember things that most people forget. My childhood could be described in two ways: 1) a series of traumatic and dramatic events, or 2) colorful and eventful. This story fits those descriptions to a T.
Before children could receive vaccinations for chicken pox, the only way to ensure you wouldn't suffer from the illness as an adult was to catch it and endure it as a child. Healthcare officials claim that the symptoms and severity of the illness are far worse if contracted as an adult, leading many parents to expose their children to the illness as early as possible. Once you have the virus in your system, your body builds up immunity, and you shouldn't suffer from it again—unless your immune system is weak, which leaves you susceptible to shingles.
It took me years to figure out where I contracted the chicken pox. Aside from the 20 kids in my class and the 30 that rode my bus, I didn't have much contact with the outside world. Don't worry; the discovery of where I caught the virus figures into this story later on.
I was in Mrs. Herring's second-grade class at Tanner Williams, sometime around Easter of 1983. My mom had been preparing for a complete hysterectomy for a few weeks. Mamma was pretty much the one to help my sister and me when we were sick, unless it involved vomit—then it was my dad's department.
Mamma had been in the hospital for a few days when she called, and I was so excited to tell her about the banana scratch-and-sniff sticker Mrs. Herring gave me for the excellent grades I'd received the previous week. I told her it would be waiting for her when she got back home. It smelled JUST like real bananas, and I thought Mamma just had to smell it for herself. I'm sure she wasn't exactly interested, but my excitement over something so small was enough to cheer her up for the moment.
The following morning, I woke up with a sore throat, an itchy back, feeling groggy, tired, and visibly sick. But my dad, an old-school Marine, had the motto to suck it up and go to school. He preached that perfect attendance was crucial to our education. In reality, thinking back, it had more to do with the fact that he would rather cut off his hand than call out from work. He HAD to go to work, and the only other person who could watch me was my sister, but she was in the 8th grade and couldn't stay home from school.
Why didn't Daddy take me to work with him, you ask? Daddy's job at the time was with a company called Leak Repair Incorporated. While it sounds like he was a plumber, he was not. He was a technician who repaired industrial steam leaks at large facilities and plants like Monsanto, Cyanamid, Air Products, Scott Paper, and various power companies like Mississippi, Gulf, and Alabama Power. Daddy's office was based in Pensacola, Florida, about 45 minutes across Mobile Bay. Even if he went through the office each day, it wouldn't have been a good environment for a sick child—it was small, barely had enough room for the secretary and his boss, Dave Croft. Pretty much Daddy's office was his work truck, and it wouldn't have been suitable for a sick child as it reeked of industrial sealant that looked like a thick slurry of ground-up asphalt, lead, and other metals mixed with thickeners and solvents.
He gave me an aspirin, and off to school I went, sick with an unknown illness. Had he looked at my back and stomach, he would have likely known that something was up, but he didn't—live and learn. For anyone who went to Tanner Williams Elementary School back in 1983, rode Mrs. Horton's bus to and from school, had lunch with Mrs. Herring's class, or was in Mrs. Herring's class, you were definitely exposed to chicken pox thanks to my dad.
Being raised the way we were, my sister and I knew better than to complain about being sick unless we REALLY were sick because it meant several things: Mamma's medicine cabinet contained nothing we wanted to take, many of the medicines were either for adults or so old that no one could remember when they were purchased. If we had a cold, we ended up with a tablespoon of Creomulsion. Little did Mamma know, it did nothing other than suppress a cough. It contained no fever reducers, pain relievers, antihistamines, or expectorants—in other words, it did nothing but taste bad and kept you from coughing, and many times, we didn't even have a cough.
To this day, I keep a bottle of it in my medicine cabinet because it is an excellent cough suppressant. So, needless to say, I didn't complain to Mrs. Herring because I didn't want her to call Daddy and have him give me the horrible medicine when I got home. For anyone who remembers chicken pox, you'll recall the unending urge to scratch and the low-grade fever all over your body as it comes on. As I sat at my desk doing my schoolwork, the itching became unbearable, my muscles began to feel crampy, and my entire body felt like it was flushing. But the itching was the main pain—so much so that I used my lead-tipped pencil to poke and scratch the little bumps all over my back that I noticed while in the bathroom during recess. I popped something with my pencil, but it didn't hurt. I was too afraid to say anything to Mrs. Herring because I didn't want anyone to know something was really wrong. I was also afraid I'd get in trouble or that she would embarrass me in front of the class over making a big deal out of hardly anything, so I just endured it.
About an hour before school let out, I discovered my voice was scratchy and almost gone, so I remained silent for the rest of the day and kept to myself on the bus instead of sitting with my friends Jay and Monica. When I got home, Grandma Manning, my dad's mom, was in the kitchen cooking dinner for us and had a pot of tea boiling on the stove. Mamma was lying on the couch. I was surprised because no one told me she was coming home. I grabbed the scratch-and-sniff sticker I'd been obsessing over and scratched it and sniffed it, but it didn't smell as good as it did the other day. In fact, it smelled rancid to me. I later discovered everything smelled funny to me because I was sick. Anyway, I handed my mom the sticker so she could share in my excitement over the prize I'd been given. She was as excited as she needed to be.
Granny didn't have her overnight bag with her; usually, she would have it if she was staying the night since she only lived about 5 miles from our house. She was just there to cook and make sure we had provisions for the next few days while Mamma rested after her hospital stay. My throat was scratchy, but the excitement of Mamma being home masked the fact that my voice was not 100%. After my dad took Granny back home, he returned with a 2-liter bottle of Sprite, a 2-liter bottle of Tab for Mamma, a box of crackers, and a bunch of cans of Campbell's soup.
A couple of minutes after Daddy came home, it was time for me to take my nightly bath. I mentioned to Mamma that I felt weird and my back was itchy, knowing that she would put her long fingernails to good use. She was a master at back-scratching, but the second she saw my back, she must have put two and two together, and it clicked in her mind, especially since my voice sounded scratchy. She asked my daddy why he let me go to school looking and sounding like I did. Daddy was dumbfounded and said that he had to work and I wasn't throwing up, so I couldn't have been that sick. She had him look at my back, and I still remember him saying, "What did he get into?" Mamma replied, "He didn't get into anything, he's got chicken pox." My sister Becki had the chicken pox a year or so before I was born, around the same time of year. Thinking back on the basic care I received, I'm sure Becki got the sort of care where a parent would try anything from aspirin to bourbon to appease the child, and I'm sure she had fewer medication options than I did.
Mamma called the doctor to ask what she should do. He told her to stay away from me because, being so soon after her operation, she could get shingles due to her compromised immune system. He also advised her to give me plenty of liquids and not to give me any aspirin. I'm sure he mentioned that antihistamines and cold medicines would help relieve my symptoms, but I don't remember being offered any medicine, and I would have remembered if I had been. I do recall her mentioning calamine lotion while on the phone, but that never happened either.
What I do remember is Mamma giving me lotion from a pink bottle and trying to convince me it was good for itching, although it did nothing. To this day, I remember that bottle of lotion with a pink label made by Avon. It definitely did not contain calamine.
Feeling bad about sending me to school, Daddy went back out to grab a few more groceries since there were two sick people in the house. He not only brought back Chicken with Rice and Alphabet Soup, but he also brought back my favorite, Chicken with Stars. Daddy also knew I'd need something to pass the time, so he bought a coloring book featuring the Superfriends and a box of store-branded crayons from K&B Drugs. I loved those crayons more than words can express. Not only did they color well—believe it or not—they were my favorite because the box and paper wrappers were my favorite color at the time, purple—K&B purple, to be exact.
Becki might have made a good daytime helper for me while I was home sick, as she was immune to chicken pox after having them over seven years ago. However, she was just 13 and had to go to school herself. When she was home, she still kept her distance—hanging out with a spotty, cranky 7-year-old isn't fun for a 13-year-old girl. Occasionally, she would stop by the couch to leave me a cold washcloth, a cup of tea, or just to mess with me like an older sister would do with her younger brother.
So, there we were, the following day, stuck at home in separate rooms. My mom, home from the hospital and still recovering from surgery, and me, sick with chicken pox. The timing couldn't have been worse. Being a mamma's boy, I just wanted to cuddle up with my mamma or love on my Springer Spaniel, Pickles. Affection is better than any medicine to me, whether from my mamma or my dog, but I was secluded from both. I’m not sure if it was just me or if it happens to everyone with chicken pox, but my sense of smell became rather bizarre—things just didn’t smell right, and my sense of taste was really off. There was a particular smell that I kept sensing, which I can only describe as acidic, like apple cider vinegar blended with whatever aroma was in the air.
Throughout the two weeks that I had the chicken pox, I remember not wanting to eat anything but butterscotch or chocolate pudding and Campbell’s soup. The only thing I wanted to drink, which felt good on my throat, was sweet tea, but Mamma didn’t keep sweetened tea in the house nor did she drink it herself; that was a holdover from when Granny was there the day before.
The house we lived in had a kitchen with a bar that overlooked a den, which we used as our main living room, and our dining room was actually part of what was built to be the actual living room. I spent my days lying on the couch, watching Nickelodeon in its early years. Children’s programming back then included a few shows like Today’s Special, featuring an actor named Jeff Hyslop (whom I would later enjoy as the Phantom), and a show that seemed to run for three hours called Pinwheel.
Pinwheel always put me to sleep, and I remember waking up to find a bowl of chicken with stars or alphabet soup on the coffee table, accompanied by a cup of sweet tea and a few crackers. Despite needing to keep her distance, Mamma still took care of me. After finishing my lunch, I'd take the bowl and cup to the kitchen and leave them in the sink. My dad did the dishes when he got home from work because Mamma couldn't stand and do the dishes due to her stitches. Daddy helped her with quick sponge baths, and for a change, instead of my usual nightly bath, Mamma and Daddy let me bathe at night and in the morning. I remember lying in the water, wishing I could stay in it all day long because it was the only time I didn't itch.
By day 5, I was covered in blisters from head to toe—on my eyelid, all over my back, front, legs, in my mouth, nose, butt, and everywhere. I was miserable and itchy and couldn't stop scratching. Mamma made me wear my winter mittens to keep from scratching, which only made me want to scratch more. My nights were spent in my bedroom with the door open, a nightlight on, and a cup of water next to my bed. I never drank the water; I used it to wet my mittens and rub on the bumps all over my back, which were the itchiest. Anything was better than the Avon lotion. My bedding, from the time I got my first bed, consisted of a fitted sheet, flat sheet, and two rough acrylic blankets from TG&Y, Wool-co, or Woolworth. The blankets were so rough and itchy that you didn't want them to touch your bare skin. This was one time I couldn't bear to have a blanket over me, even with a sheet between me and the blanket, and I'm someone who has to have a thick blanket when I sleep for security reasons. So, I settled for the thin blue sheet as my cover. Somehow, I managed to sleep despite being itchy, in pain, and feeling unsecured.
Saturday morning arrived, and I woke up still infected, but it looked like the blisters were almost gone. After a week of illness, I was ready to get better. I headed to my spot on the couch and started watching cartoons. My dad was already up, and I remember seeing him fill his ice chest with cans of beer. I asked if he was going fishing because that's usually what he did before going fishing. He told me the neighbors were grilling out, and the beer was for that. I love cookouts; it meant we were having barbecued chicken—my favorite. After a week of condensed canned soup, anything sounded good to me.
I opened the refrigerator door and saw a big bowl of butterscotch pudding chilling—HELL YEAH! Despite everything, I was still sick and likely stuck inside. As the day progressed, Daddy headed to the backyard, fired up the grill, and I could smell the barbecue permeating through our open window. It was a beautiful day, and I heard the chatter of the neighbors, their kids, my sister, and my parents in the backyard. The windows were open, and I could see, hear, and smell everything but wasn't allowed outside. All I wanted, more than anything, was to go outside, eat a chicken leg, sneak a beer from the cooler, go back inside, and enjoy some pudding. Becki occasionally passed the window and teased me, knowing I was stuck inside. Mamma came inside with a chicken leg for me and asked if I wanted some soup. I told her I wanted pudding. She brought me a bowl of pudding and sat next to me for the first time since she got out of the hospital. She felt my head and told me I still had a fever but might be ready to go to school on Monday.
Mrs. Herring sent some work for me to do with Monica, my friend who lived two doors down from us. It wasn't as extensive as our classwork but enough to keep up with her lesson plan. Funny how things work—I got sick and still managed to keep my grades up with minimal work. I never got my beer, but the pudding made up for it. My throat was still itchy, but the pudding was soothing, and I told my mom I wanted more because it felt good. Sunday passed, and Mamma was feeling better, up and moving more, possibly just tired of lying around. I know I was tired of lying around, but when you're itchy and hot from a fever, it's best to stay still and relaxed. The bumps looked like they might be gone by morning, and my fever was just a low-grade fever. My voice was back to normal by the time my 8 PM bedtime arrived.
Monday came around, and as ready as I was to get out of the house, I woke up still not feeling better. The bumps had begun to clear up the day before, and I would have done anything to get dressed and go to school. But there was no faking it—I looked in the mirror, and the bumps were back in full force. I'd had them for 7 days, and the average duration is 5 to 7 days. The general consensus was that I might have had a relapse or gotten them a second time because my infection lasted longer than usual. I just wanted to get out of the house for a little while. I didn't know what I was missing, but it had to be better than 3 hours of "Pinwheel" followed by "The Price is Right," "Days of Our Lives," and "Another World." At least I could sit up, color, and do things to keep busy while watching TV.
The same thing happened on Tuesday and Wednesday. Later on Wednesday night, Mamma helped me get out of the bathtub. She looked at my back and asked if I'd scratched myself with something other than my hands. I told her I used my pencil at school. There was one lesion that was healing slower than the rest, possibly because it had burst and become infected. She cleaned it with peroxide and said I might get to go to school in the morning. I was super excited—I was sick of staying home sick. When I woke up Thursday morning, I was still a bit itchy but thought it might just be mental. Mamma told me to take a bath, and while I was in the tub, she took my temperature. She said if it was normal, I could go to school. I wished as hard as I could that it was normal, trying not to touch the tip of the thermometer with my tongue, hoping to coax it into being normal. Unfortunately, I had to stay home, but Mamma said I didn't have to lay on the couch if I didn't want to.
I spent most of the day following her around as she did household chores and laundry. Our washing machine was in a room just outside our back door in the front of our carport. We didn't have a dryer, as it wasn't an expense people could justify back then, so we hung our clothes to dry on a clothesline that spanned the side of our backyard. I helped Mamma hang the laundry, handing her the clothespins as she hung each item. Our dog, Pickles, was strictly an outdoor dog. Mamma didn't believe in having animals in the house, and now that I'm older, I can't imagine keeping a dog outside. Anyway, Pickles followed me around, nudging my leg with her cold, wet nose. She was as excited to interact with me as I was with her. Over a week of not seeing Pickles except through the window made me happy to finally play with her.
After the laundry was on the line, Mamma said she was tired and needed to lie down, as she was still recovering from surgery. She headed to bed, and I followed. Taking a nap anywhere other than my room or the couch felt like a vacation in itself. We both fell asleep until Daddy got home from work. He brought in the laundry and folded it while Mamma cooked dinner. She took my temperature just before my nightly bath but didn't say anything.
I woke up the next day, Friday morning, to find my clothes for the day laid out on the little table next to my bed. I got dressed and went to the living room to find all the schoolwork I'd done over the past two weeks in a neat pile. Mamma gave me a bowl of cereal and told me to hurry up so I wouldn't miss the bus. It was Friday, and I finally got to go to school. I was so excited. I wasn't itchy or sick, and I felt good and ready to see my friends at school. I hurried up, ate, brushed my teeth, put on my shoes, grabbed my Masters of the Universe lunchbox and the papers I had to turn in to Mrs. Herring. I headed out to the bus stop where Monica usually stood, but she wasn't there—just the two weird girls who never talked to me and lived across the street from Monica. Mrs. Horton's bus pulled up, and I was all smiles and happy to see her. I noticed that a fourth of the kids who were usually on the bus weren't there.
When I arrived at school and went to my class, I set my papers on Mrs. Herring's desk and put my lunchbox in my cubby hole on the wall. When the bell rang, I looked around and saw that at least a third of my class was absent. It seemed there was an outbreak of chicken pox in my class, in the cafeteria, and on the bus over the past week. While I can't be 100% sure, I have a feeling that my dad's decision to send me to school the day I complained about feeling bad might have impacted a bunch of kids in my class, lunchroom, and bus. I guess the silver lining is that none of those kids will suffer from chicken pox as adults.
Remember how I mentioned discovering years later how I contracted chicken pox? Mamma finally came clean and told me that she exposed me to the chicken pox about three weeks before she was supposed to go into the hospital. She sent me to play with the girl next door, Angie. Angie wasn't exactly an ideal playmate; she was a known bully, and most neighboring parents encouraged us to avoid her. However, on this day, my mom, along with Monica and her sister Meredith's mom, Ms. Karen, sent us all over to Angie's to play together. Angie wasn't very interested, so we ended up sitting in her living room, watching Fraggle Rock on HBO, drinking Kool-Aid, and eating chips and dip.
As most know, kids are notorious for double-dipping, except for me—I hate that, but I can't resist Doritos and French Onion dip. The plan was to expose Monica, Meredith, and me to the chicken pox that Angie had at the time. None of us had a clue because, unlike my parents, Angie's mom had her on adult-strength Tylenol with codeine throughout her infection.
The idea was that I would get the pox a week and a half before Mamma went into the hospital and be rid of them within 5 to 7 days. Meredith got the pox within a few days, but Monica and I didn't, leading our parents to think we were immune. Mamma went into the hospital, and then the virus finally took hold when it was least expected. My immune system must have been stronger than they thought. Unfortunately, the plan backfired due to the unpredictable timing of my infection. Monica got the chicken pox the weekend of our barbecue and missed school for a week plus three more days.
Did you get vaccinated or endure the chicken pox? What's your story? Please share in the comments below.
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