I was searching and sorting and purging a pile of papers and I found this, a predecessor to Monday’s post. It’s on a scrap of yellow legal pad, so it probably rose from the ashes of a school staff meeting or staff development. This piece wasn’t for the CDC. In fact, I’m pretty sure I wrote it pre-blog. To make it current, it would need almost no changes.

You know the flu has taken over when:

• Chicken soup and cinnamon toast make a meal.
• The phone rings and the teenager doesn’t move.
• The blind family member identifies people by their coughs rather than their voices.
• The dishwasher is full of glasses and bowls because no one is eating real meals.
• Each sick person carries around his/her own box of tissue.
• Suddenly the supply of Tylenol and ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet looks woefully under stocked.

The above list was written with a sense of – well, something close to gallows humor, if I remember correctly. Since that year, all of us have stayed up to date on flu shots. Get your own flu vaccine, people. It’s not too late.