Snuggle-Ready

So, a couple weeks ago Kaitlin mentioned to her mother that the two of us needed to get a TDAP booster shot before little Silas is born. Her doctor recommended it to anyone who will be in “close contact” with the baby in the first couple months of his life as an extra precaution. Of course, I had never heard of the TDAP vaccine. Apparently it was one of the many vaccines I received when I was a kid—along with polio, the measles, mumps and rubella. Since I dodged those bullets, and had no desire to get either tetanus, diphtheria or acellular pertussis, I was all in, waltzed into Publix and took care of it yesterday morning!

While I was at it, I got the second shingles vaccine in the other arm. Then I went to the gym to workout, sporting two upside down bandaids. While there a stranger noticed and asked if I had just gotten vaccines. He looked quite concerned. Guy looked to be in his late 40’s early 50’s. I explained the situation. Finally he said, “To each his own…” Then I asked him if he was a doctor or something. He said, “No, I run a landscaping business…but I’ve done a lot of research.”

Another Google PhD. You remember them right? Back when we were all terrified about COVID and even more terrified when the vaccine came out, these folks appeared all over my news feed. Instant experts on infectious disease were suddenly popping up everywhere. Some dude who installed AC units during the day had done the research and was 100% sure that there was a conspiracy afoot in the land. Dude spends two days on the Internet and suddenly he’s Jonas Salk! Men and women with advanced degrees and 30 years of experience in the field of immunizations were all desperate to keep the truth from you in a grand scheme whereby a few elites would—I don’t know—make a fortune trading pharmaceutical stocks, or indoctrinate millions of people by slipping some sort of liberal drug into the vaccine which would make everyone vote democrat. Good times.

I never did my own research on vaccines for much the same reason as I don’t do my own research on why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. I’m on life’s great back nine. Time and resources are limited. I don’t have time to reinvent the wheel every time I leave the house. The sun rises and sets like it has done since the dawn of time. I choose to not spend an awful lot of time pondering this fact. And since I have literally never once met a single soul with polio, never known anyone who died of whooping cough…I’ll take that as a sign that vaccines probably work. On the other hand, my trick knee tells me that the chances that I might give my grandson a deadly case of rubella without this boosted shot are slim, but it took me fifteen minutes and cost me zero dollars to get it. Now, I am ready to snuggle the heck out of my first grandchild. My daughter is happy. I’ll save all the research for when one of my arms starts getting longer than the other and I suddenly find myself growing fond of Bernie Sanders. No wait…maybe that comes from chemtrails. I’ll have to do the research.