Whims - 26Sep26
00:00:29 Chris Golden: Hello. It's Saturday morning. Welcome to Whims! Chris here. I thought I would actually talk about something that affects, I would imagine, quite a few different people this time of year. And that is the back to school plague. My daughter has been in school now for a couple of weeks, having had a phenomenally busy summer off, and within the first week she picked up a cold bug or some form of some sickness, brought it home. We kept her home from school for a day because she was quite ill, and we feel that it's responsible as us, as parents, to ensure that she gets the rest and recovery that she needs before going back to school. And I know a lot of parents are in similar situations, but based on circumstance may not always be in that position regardless. It just is an interesting experience when all of the kids get back to school and almost immediately, uh, the flu bug, the cold bug, whatever it happens to be, starts going around. Now, I don't recall getting sick at the start of any school year as I was growing up. Obviously my memories aren't as good as they once were, but it's not something that I recall happening. I found that I would always get sick, usually around the holiday season, right when fall transitioned into winter or around my birthday when when winter was really in full effect. But, um, it appears that my daughter, she's more accustomed to, to bring something home, some exotic new sickness at the start of a school year. And then when my wife and I pick it up, which is almost inevitable, either my wife usually first, me second, or, and occasionally me first. We then get shut down for days. But as parents, we don't really have that opportunity to shut down. We're still responsible to work. We're responsible to making sure our our child gets to school and to our activities. And so unlike her, who we were able to sort of shut down for a day to fully recover, we have to sort of stretch it out. But it's also amazing if we think about the science of it all is that, you know, a young, you know, person has an immune system that's seen all of these illnesses in a novel sense and has to develop the antibodies and really the strength to, to deal with it. And I often will joke that, you know, public school or school in general is a government sanctioned, sanctioned biological research facility because, you know, kids do swap illnesses and their immune systems grow as a result of it. But then those novel bugs come home to us. And as, as parents, our immune systems, well, they have this wealth of information from everything that we've experienced as we've grown up, uh, over our lives and encountered the novel. Bugs are the ones that sort of knock us flat on our butt, and it just takes so much longer to get over. My daughter was pretty much back to her normal self within a couple of days, whereas my wife now she's been, uh, hacking and wheezing for a fair number of days. Me, I've just felt like I've been hit by a truck for the better part of a week. Uh, yesterday was just a tough day. Um, and that might also have to do with the fact that we had our first fall weather system arrive and dump just a torrential amount of rain on us. So you have sort of that, you know, vibe interacting with just the, the general malaise. But the sun is out today. Uh, I woke up, I'm feeling a little bit better. I still got a little congestion, but maybe, you know, much like most illnesses, it just takes a, a few additional days of rest and recovery before you can get on back with the, the regular swing of things and wait for the next, uh, next novel bug to, to make its appearance.
00:04:50 Chris Golden: Whims is recorded on the traditional and unceded territory for the Semiahmoo, Kwantlen and Katzie Nations. You can email me at whimsfyi@proton.me, that's W H I M S F Y I at proton.me, with a casual hello, comments, questions or the winning lottery numbers. And no, I don't need your help with SEO. You can find all the links mentioned in this episode, in the show notes on the website, whims.fyi. And the song you hear at the start and the end of the show is "The Homestead" from Logan at musicformakers.com.