Boogie Time

I didn’t want to write about boogies today. I really really did not want to do that, but Magoo started talking about them this morning and I simply must share.

We, like many of you, have been sick sick sick for the past few weeks. It comes and goes. It moves from person to person. The symptoms change but someone is sick practically all the time. It’s not all germ related. As I was getting over my sore throat and nasal congestion, I threw my back out while picking our fat and rather luscious baby up out of the bathtub. That put me flat on my back for a few more days. I started getting well just in time to see Laylee come down with a fever. She was the last person in the house to have maintained a clean bill of health this winter.

This morning she was sick and is staying home from school. I honestly don’t know how parents handle this when both of them work outside the home. It’s hard enough juggling our schedules now to take care of all the flu season casualties. I would not want to throw a full time job into that mix. To all of you dual-income families, I salute you today.

Since we’ve all been sick, we’ve been explaining to the kids all about germs and antibodies. We’ve especially focused on boogies, their function of getting germs out of the body, and the need to blow them out and then wash our hands thoroughly to get as many germs out of our systems as possible. The germs should not be sniffed back into the recesses of the nasal cavities and possibly all the way into the brain tissue. They should certainly not be ingested and please, for the love of PETE, they should not be gifted to another person inside or outside our family.

In our household we focus on boogies as germ fighters that work hard and must then be disposed of and that’s what led us to this morning’s breakfast conversation.

Laylee: I’ll be glad if I get green boogies because green boogies mean my body’s fighting really hard against germs.

Magoo: When you get black boogies, that means they’re fighting even harder than the green ones. Last night I got a red boogie and that means it’s fighting SUPER hard!

Pause.

Magoo [rethinking]: But MOM! Boogies don’t even MOVE! They can’t FIGHT!

I said something to him about antibodies and how we can’t see them actually fighting. I mean, come on. They can’t even hold nun chucks or a bo staff. But the battle rages on and many are the casualties both large and small. I’m color-blind where boogies are concerned. I just want to wipe them all out and have a happy and mucus-free Christmas.