H1N1

i'm sure i've mentioned this (and, regardless, if you're reading this blog, you are most likely know my mother and are very familiar with her particular quirks), but just so that we are all on the same page, my mom is a gigantic hypochondriac.  gigantic.  i hypothesize she lives in fear of any and all possible dangers because she came of age in the mid-eighties, when AIDS was first discovered as the horrific wasting illness we now know all about.  she lost a few close college friends to the disease and i think after experiencing the AIDS hysteria of 1985, she decided to be hyper-protective of her children.  she saw people she cared about die from something terrible that they contracted mysteriously (or so she thought at the time) and i don't think that panic really ever went away.  we were told not to hug our grandparents when they had the sniffles and we all wore thick-soled water shoes into the ocean until we were well into our teens (lest we step on an errant hypodermic needle - her fear of AIDS has never gone away, it's just been channeled into the complete avoidance of any object that could infect us).  i'm still afraid of people with colds.  like, actually afraid.  and, as a kid, it used to make me crazy.  i spent a good deal of time pestering her and berating her and refusing to wear my water shoes.  now, though, as i've gotten older (and earned a B.A. in psychology), i can understand where her fear comes from.

the point of my going into all of this is that my mother has loved all the swine flu hype.  she's chilled out a lot recently, but she still can't handle talk of global pandemics.  so, imagine my horror when i learned that they closed the high school i graduated from, the high school my brother will attend and where my mother works, because a student tested positive for the dreaded H1N1*.  i haven't talked to her yet, but i can imagine she isn't too pleased to know that this thing that all the news stations have been screaming about for days has infiltrated our little town and wiggled its way into her workplace.

*thanks, andy.  can i get my neuroscience Ph.D now?  :)