In the family albums I can’t find any photos of my brothers and I being really sick, which is surprising because my father would take a photo of anything that held still. There are a few of us when we were recovering and bored.

In those days when you were sick, you just sweated it out. Literally. We didn’t have to worry about AIDS but there was a lot of worry about polio. The little girl next door died of that. We were vaccinated for smallpox. None of us had mumps. I personally only had measles, chicken pox, and pneumonia, which meant that I had a shot in the butt with the new miracle drug, penicillin. No one asked me if I were allergic to it. Until penicillin lots of children died of pneumonia.

My brother had scarlet fever, which gave him a slight heart murmur, but not bad enough to keep him from wrestling in high school. Just bad enough for my mother to worry forever after, even after he was grown and strong. And bad enough that the bedroom curtains and my big box of paper dolls were burned because they had been under the bed. I was aghast because they were real people to me; I had a vision of germs like radioactive dandruff falling on the box, a kind of sci-fi.

Our sore throats and coughs were treated with Cheracol, a cherry-flavored cough syrup. In fact, we loved it (high alcohol content and really sweet) and insisted that if any one of us coughed, we all had to have some on grounds of prevention. I don’t think it had codeine in it, but maybe. The other major prevention for colds and flu was Vicks Vaporub which my mother rubbed on vigorously, saying, “Golly, golly, golly, golly. . .” I have no idea why she said that. I asked her as a grownup and she thought it was ridiculous to even THINK about Vicks. (I still put it on my chest but don’t say “Golly,golly,golly, golly” unless the cats ask me to. They love the stuff and want to lick it.) Bob used to put it in his mouth and let it dissolve. The directions say not to do that, but he came from a time when turpentine was considered medicine, and he thought Vicks was milder that that.

My legs ached all through adrenarche when long bones are growing and stretching out muscles. My mother rubbed on lemon-scented liniment but she didn’t say anything. I suspect she was cursing under her breath because it usually ached most at bedtime, which was supposed to be the beginning of her alone time.

When we went strawberry picking — in my day, during strawberry season, the growers counted on child labor and school letting out was timed to send us into the fields — we’d crawl or stoop along the rows all day until we were crippled and sunburned. The first line of medication was stopping at a place called “Frosty Root Beer” where they put the glass mugs in the freezer. The root beer froze onto the sides, colder than cold can scientifically be. When we got home, my mom rubbed us down with Absorbine Jr. These days, if I’m really in pain, I use the original Sr. version which was invented for horses. I like the smell of these meds. Doesn’t seem like meds smell much anymore.

We took “Petrolauger” (white glop) and Jaquline (?) which might have been Geritol. Some kind of iron tonic that tasted wretched. Cod liver oil. Everyone took cod liver oil — not in capsules, with a spoon. In my mother’s last years the doctor wanted her to take potassium. He said it tasted dreadful and most people wouldn’t do it, even if he asked them to for their own good, but my mother was tough and obedient, so he told her to do it and she did. Proudly. She was a Stoic. More than was good for her.

When a Catholic family with seven girls moved in across the street, it coincided with a plague of ringworm on we three kids and my cat. My mother stood each of us in turn on a bench and painted each circle with iodine while we screamed and stamped our feet as though she were burning them off with a hot iron. Years later the girls across the street confided that they thought we were undergoing some strange Protestant torture ritual. I painted the cat myself. He didn’t fuss but he looked a little strange being black and white and purple.

Because I had chicken pox, I have herpes. It might flare up as shingles. I’ve had rabies shots because of being an animal control officer, but it might have worn off by now.

I’m just kidding around, trying to make being sick seem normal. I can remember three times over the years that T. simply freaked out over the amount of pills and scars. Once he had all the pill bottles grouped on the kitchen table, covering the entire surface, and once he had them all in a bag and dumped them out onto a couch, making a heap bigger than the dog.

But the bitterly funniest one was a review of his surgery scars — ALL of them. There are a lot, both shoulders, both hips, torso front and back, arms, collar bone. But later he came back and removed the butt shot. Too bad. He has a cute butt. For an old Alpha Male.