Feverish memories

You won't believe this, but I remember having the chicken pox when I was just under 4. There were several things about the episode that just seemed permanently burned into my memory.

One was the fact my mom made a very big deal about my not scratching open the blisters even though they itched like mad. I did pop one over my right eye brow and ended up with a characteristic little pock mark. I fixed it without medical assistance, about four years ago I was putting up a chandelier and dropped it on my face and a sharp edge cut that pock right in two.

The FBI had to completely re-write my description to cover the fact I am now seriously depocked.

In the 1930s, things were really different with regard to drugs for kids. Fevers were God's way of getting kids through The Crisis because certain microorganisms die like flies when subjected to high fevers.

I don't know any exact temperature numbers, but the fever I had with the chicken pox was so high, I hallucinated that fire was coming out of the keyholes in my mother's sewing machine which she kept in my little bedroom.

It seems our memory capabilities start really early, especially in matters of true significance. I was run over at 2-and-a-half and remember everything about that too. That's good news, the facts are that really high fevers can make little minds a tad mushy and forgetful so it coulda been bad.

Last week I had the flu and can't forget it either. This time the fire felt like it was coming out of my nostrils, we sold the sewing machine when my mom quit making our clothes, so that cute little fire-snorting machine story won't fly any more. I am one lucky guy when it comes to illness.

The last awful fever I had because of the flu was around 1972. They had stuff to control fever then, but I just toughed it out ... drugs scare me.

This particular flu has some interesting characteristics. The congestion in the throat becomes musical on exhalation. Picture little harps and things made of swollen epiglottis and vocal cords with yucky little stringy things acting as tiny harps, harmonicas, castanets and clarinets. At one point, big exhales gave off the sad wail of a killer whale in search of a mate. Later, my head was filled with the chirping of birds and the croak of the Whistling Tree Frog which has been known to occur above the winter snowline in the Bimberi Mountains in Australia.

I have only heard a recording of it once, but one never forgets that haunting sound that says, "Listen carefully, Mortal Man, for you have sent me into oblivion with your blasted and persistent snowmobile antics."

To get any sleep at all, it became important for me to tune into the discordant symphonies on Public Radio to distract and drown out the cacophony inside my own skull. (And as you know, the potential for persistent reverberation in a square-head has many times the volume of a normal little round head like Charlie Brown.)

If you don't think PBS plays things you can't listen to, remember the Herb Caen column when he described a concert in San Francisco in which the orchestra had to interminably hold a violently discordant chord so long, one of the audience members who couldn't stand it for another second, stood and screamed," Stop! Stop! I'll talk! I'll talk!"

So as well as being tortured with the internally generated noises that have kept me awake for almost a week, I had to face the specter of an Al Gore chewing me out as well over the extinction of the Australian Litoria verrauxii alpina.

Luckily, most viruses are generally self-limiting, so that whole nightmare turned out to be just another week in the life of your feckless little columnist, Bob Bader, Lodi chiropractor and prevaricator.

Bob Bader can be reached at bobbyo@softcom.net.

Reader Feedback

Cogito wrote on Apr 10, 2008 8:18 AM:

" Scrutiny, LOL, you're killing me! "

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Scrutiny wrote on Apr 9, 2008 8:14 AM:

" I remember spending 8 months trying to get out a womb...been trying to get back in ever since. "

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Cogito wrote on Apr 7, 2008 10:31 PM:

" My earliest memory was learning to walk. It's only about 5 seconds long, but I remember my mom letting me go, walking towards my father only a few feet away, and falling down. My mom thought that there was no way I could remember being that young, until I described my pants, shoes, and the floor in our house. I walked at 10 months. I have a few memories of living in that house, and we moved out well before I was 2. "

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J Fox wrote on Apr 7, 2008 11:30 AM:

" Maybe 3+ years for first memories! I remember a Grunion run night at the beach. (Later learned that's the week my Dad shipped off for the Korean War.) Much later I realized the Marines entertaining us kids were the bachelors as the married couples snagged blankets and headed off into the dunes for "from here to eternity" moments. We kids in the kitchen of a beach cottage watched the door to tell those Marines when someone was coming. They'd shake up a beer, church-key it open to spray foam on the ceiling then it would cascade down on the victim. "

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I was so sick, I saw fire flicking out of my mom's sewing machine

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