About a month ago, the Kid had a nasty flu bug. Not swine flu (I think) but just your general sore throat, fever, snot nosed flu bug. I kept him home from school while he had a fever (cause I’ve always been told that a fever is a good sign that it’s still contagious) which meant 3 days of the monkey face lounging on the couch.

After 2 days I got a call from the school. When I explained that Kid was sick, I got some nasty feedback about how he “needs to be in class” and a super snotty “Well! Are you going to send him tomorrow!” phrased less like a question and more like the exasperated flouncing of a southern belle who just found out the slaves were freed and wants to know who is going to wash her pantaloons.

I said he’s got a fever, he’s leaking snot from everywhere, and he might even have strep. Do you really want him sharing that with all his classmates? He’ll be back when he’s better.”

(Ruth wants to know what I have done to inspire the ire of the public school system that every dealing with a school person is chock full of condescending asshatery. It’s simple, I’m a poor single mom who fights back when they are shitheads. That’s all it takes).

Moving on. We now have one case of swine flu at a local middle school. That middle school is closed down even though the parent of the sick kid did just what they were supposed to do and kept the kid home. There are supposed to be more school closures announced tonight, at least 3. I gotta wonder if the school district’s policy of berating parents for keeping sick kids home helps or hurts the efforts to stop the spreading of disease. Certainly in the Kid’s case they would have been happy to have his feverish self coughing lovely influenza saturated phlegm all over their classrooms.