98.6

Sometimes I marvel at how far we have come in the last thirty years, black people in country clubs, the white house, electric cars, Amazon Fresh! It can all be summed up in the fact that I am writing this post on my phone while taking a shit. My daughter doesn't know how good she has it. What is she going to do, grow up and complain about how when she was little, her Ipad was a gen 3 and her dad was too lazy to hang her flat screen on the wall so it sat on her dresser. When I was little the dresser was the TV! She doesn't know the struggle.

I think about just how good she has it anytime she feels sick. If she appears to have a fever, I pull out a device, stick it in her ear for 10 seconds, and her temp appears on an LCD screen. No complaints, just exact numbers in a nonivasive way.

Now let me tell you how it went when I was little:

Picture me having the chills, due to Sybil not cooking a roast properly, or because my father blew smoke rings directly into my lungs. Sybil proceeds to pull an oral thermometer from the bottom of her pocket book that inexplicably has no case. She sticks it under my tongue for three seconds, notices I'm not holding it in place and screams that she needs a more accurate reading that she can only get rectally. My pupils dilate and I dart off to hide in the closet. Meanwhile Sybil goes to the hall bathroom, where she dips a rectal thermometer, that she also had loose in her purse, into a huge tub of A&D ointment that for some reason has no lid, but plenty of lint. She then proceeds to rip me out of the closet, throw me on the bed and treat me like Abner Louima, only this time there is no payoff for the victim. Five minutes later, the thermometer would be removed with the same care as it was inserted. After a quick wipe of the thermometer, it would be tossed back in the pocket book. As I was left there, pants down, ointment all over my cheeks, Sybil would mutter my temperature was 98.6.

No cleanup, no sorry, no day off from school due to a fever!!

The struggle was real indeed.