Pages

Monday 2 October 2017

Chapter Xii,1967,Continued.

One of the rites of passage before I could enter school was getting a vaccination for smallpox.I'd never met anyone who had had smallpox, and that was largely because a lot of resources were being invested to eradicate it.Everyone had to be vaccinated.

Every adult I knew had been vaccinated.They all had little round scars on their arms to show where this had been done.My mother and father both showed me what their scars looked like, and explained that they were put there with a needle.I would go to a nurse, and she would stick a needle in my arm,and inject the smallpox vaccine.The reason I was given for this at the time was that it would stop me from getting sick.Smallpox was a very dangerous sickness, and, my parents told me, if you got it, you would die.That almost certainly explained why I didn't know anyone who had smallpox, and that everyone I did know had a scar on their arm. In any event, I didn't want to die without ever getting inside the schoolhouse, and I might want to marry my friend Karen someday I thought.Truth be known, the school was a big attraction, but I'm not certain I'd rather have married Karen or died.I still remembered our rock fight, and at times thought she was mean.

In those days,the vaccinations were given at the Legion Hall, which was at John and Highfield Streets, just before you got downtown.It was a rather cool spring day when my father took me down there for the vaccination.On the way he asked if I was afraid."No." I said.But I wasn't so certain.I knew having a needle poked into my arm was likely going to hurt.But I was not going to admit being afraid.I was going to walk right into that room and let the nurse do what she had to.Thinking about it was uncomfortable though.I knew that pain was something to be avoided. The worst part of it was having weeks to think about it.I'd occasionally fallen outside and hurt myself, with the usual assortment of childhood cuts and scrapes.Only in those events, there was no need to think about it, because the mishaps just happened.There was no thinking about them.They happened and they were over just as fast, and life went on.It seemed unfair somehow that I had to think about this vaccination for so long.

Inside the legion,there were a bunch of older people sitting around at tables drinking beer.My father seemed to know some of them, and greeted them warmly. The room for the vaccinations was off to the side, behind a closed door.There was a table lined with these tiny containers, all in neat rows.There was also a sort of a box with things that were clearly the needles. The air had a sharp alcohol scent, and I didn't like it much.It was that smell that I wanted to get away from more than anything.It only took a minute.The nurse, who wasn't dressed like a nurse at all asked me what my name was, then asked if I was ready.I told her I was and she said that I might feel a little poke, but that it wouldn't hurt much.What I actually felt was more like a little scratch, and it really didn't hurt.It was kind of like brushing a piece of sandpaper over my arm.The nurse had a piece of candy of some sort that she handed me as a reward for not making her job difficult.She also handed my father a pamphlet with information about the vaccine on it.It showed pictures of how the scar should look after certain periods of time.The last picture showed a scar just like the one on both of my parents arms.That took about three weeks.It would scab over, and eventually the scab would fall off. Along the way though, there were some pretty ugly looking stages, and this worried me more that the needle.

I still recall vividly how the scar came to fall off.It had gotten to the last stage, which looked like an ugly grey scab.It itched a little bit.We were playing in the living room one night, with an old box.We would take turns getting into the box, and then we would roll the box over, with either me or my sister inside it.Then,we would roll it upright again ant the person inside the box would pretend to be a jack in the box. So when it was my turn to jump up out of the box,I did.And I caught the scab on my arm, which I'd nearly forgotten about,on the edge of the box,and off it came.Actually that hurt much more than getting the vaccination did.I was happy it was gone though.At the babysitter's I was made to take an aspirin, and go for a nap, because the babysitter decided I was having a reaction to the vaccination.With the aspirin, I was made to chew it up because she said water would make it so that it wouldn't work as well.It tasted dry and bitter and was hard to get down without water.As for the nap, I was six years old.Afternoon naps were an affront to my dignity.I can't say whether I was having a reaction or not, but I wasn't feeling sick at all. In all,the vaccination hardly seemed as big a deal as all the adults made it out to be, and now, finally, I was almost ready to go to school.  

No comments: