Every man (or student) for himself.

You really get the flavor of people when a "pandemic" comes to town. Yes our quaint little village has been struck again...this time with the swine flu (now known as H1N1 Novel Influenza for fear of offending any pig farmers out there). The schools were closed yesterday "as a caution" and we were all advised to stay home and not congregate. The "probable case" came from the high school and we were exposed to families (and some kids themselves) with kids in high school not just Friday night and Saturday night, but at a Sunday brunch as well so...we laid low yesterday...didn't even run to the store for milk (which had a lot more to do with how much work I had to do than not spreading/catching any germs). Today the High School remains closed, but the middle, intermediate and elementary schools are all back in business (disinfected by the custodians...who are immune? I hope the bus company followed suit). So let's see...should we assume that those high schoolers who have been exposed have no siblings who are in the other three schools and that their parents are not off at Honeywell or walking the skyways of Minneapolis...or how 'bout the Big Guy who hopped on a plane to New Orleans yesterday? He was not sure whether to be worried about passing along germs on the plane or catching something worse down in the bayou. I know people who took the day off from school as a vacation day and got together with groups of friends...which pretty much makes this unstoppable. What I am saying here is that if it's going around, you're going to be exposed no matter what you do (short of building a bubble around yourself...and maybe even by then you would have been exposed anyway and then you would be trapped inside your padded cell with all those nasty germs). Between leaving school on Friday (and I volunteered at three of the four schools that day) and prior to knowing the germs were multiplying in our area, our family was in contact with families from two other school districts and three different colleges not to mention all the offices and cities associated with the various adults in the rooms. So...the Big Guys solution on Sunday afternoon after receiving the news, "I'm going to take this matter into my own hands and drown it with vodka...lots of vodka." Seems to be working.