Friday, December 05, 2008

Cultivating weakness.

Are rampant allergies and runny noses the inevitable fate of the Bubble-Wrap Generation? Maybe so.
...[S]end your kids to school with PBJs, and let them play in the dirt more often. They will eventually thank you for it.
I know that when I was little, the occasional Frail Child was a one-per-class phenomenon, and something to be pitied between mockings; now it appears that one in four children will keel over dead if they get a whiff of the wrong substance. I wonder what the relative "peanut allergy" rates are between St. Anthony's Preparatory Academy and St. Attila's Reform School? Are Morlocks as susceptible to the malady as Eloi?

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

When my wife was an ICU nurse she told me their infectious disease specialist doc regularly brought her toddler with her on rounds.

She said it was a good thing to have her daughter exposed early rather than shield her from every little microbe.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

I could make the case that just sending the little brats to preschool will automatically expose them to plenty of germs.

My wife (who teaches swimming at a place that also has a preschool) brings their germs home to me on a regular basis :)

(Thanks for the link, milady.)

Ken said...

My family's philosophy for generations has been "Everybody's got to eat a peck of dirt before they die."

Anonymous said...

Us morlocks tend to be immune to a lot

Anonymous said...

Just read an article that said the rise of peanut alergies is tied to the fact that young mothers were told to not feed their infants peanuts.

Rabbit said...

My immune system is so tough it attacks me. I take stuff to keep it at bay and switch it off to cut down on all the overtime it puts in. I can't go into the back yard at night because it turns the stay cats in the alley into flash-bangs and bothers the neighbors. My coworkers tend to work from home, but when their school-age incubii bring bugs home with them, they come to the office so I can spread conferred immunity to them through compliment cascade.

I swear, I've got my own Raccoon City going here at the office.

Regards,
Rabbit.

Anonymous said...

It's a good question. Early, small exposures are, in general, a good thing. My kids eat PB&Js a few times a week. Their schools ask if anyone in a class has an allergy, but if not, they're fine with the stuff.

I can't fix 'em, though, 'cause I developed my peanut allergy as an adult - which is really strange. Apparently, the combination of celery (turns out I'm faintly allergic to it, too), a few beers and a bunch of peanuts sent my immune system into a serious tizzy - hives everywhere, eyes swollen shut and fainting from a blood pressure crash. I'm pretty lucky to have made it - at least, that what's my doc said to/yelled at me. They did one of the grid tests on my back, for peanuts there was a welt the size of a quarter. Now, I'm not in so bad of a shape that I can't have it in the same room as me, or have to avoid things 'made in a plant that processes peanuts'.

wv: 'impecta' - Yeah, it's had one. No more PB&J, Reese's or Nutter Butters. Dangit. On the plus side, home-made cashew butter!

Anonymous said...

"Are Morlocks as susceptible to the malady as Eloi?"

No.

verword: renates

I once knew a morlock named Renate.... if it was her's, it wasn't healthy to fool with it....

Anonymous said...

We had a Frail Child in my class when I was in grade school. If you so much as looked sideways at her (and she got a pinch kicker -and- a pinch runner for kickball... and got to pick who she used...), the nuns would slap you into the next room...

And those were lathe and plaster walls.

Anonymous said...

And me home sick with hives. Although in my case it was taking an inadvertent bath in Metyl-Ethyl-Ketone. I'll never have oily skin again.

J. Sullivan said...

I'm no doctor but you should see the list of foods forbidden to my pregnant wife. I think it starts in the womb and gets worse from there.

In-fucking-sane. I mean, come on.

Anonymous said...

A peck hell. I had eaten a skid loader bucket full by the time I graduated HS.

God made dirt, so dirt won't hurt.

w/v subromer ( I are ex submariner)