Swine Flu Sucks! A Lot!!

I don’t care what the doctor says; I blame the chocolate covered bacon I bought at the Fair.

Never in a million years did I ever expect that anybody in my family, or even anybody I knew, would ever get hit with some media scare worldwide epidemic. Boy was I wrong…

My daughter’s been learning about all kinds of animals in preschool the past few months and wanted to see some “real” ones. Apparently the ones on TV, in books, or I draw aren’t good enough for her anymore.

So here I thought, “Hey! The L.A. Zoo is pretty dirty and smelly so let’s avoid the place because we could get bird flu by just walking through the turnstiles.”
And “The L.A. Country Fairy is pretty dirty, smelly, scary, and last time I was there I ate a deep-fried Oreo and nearly died near the deep-fried pork chop on-a-stick wagon.”
But 5 years ago we paid a visit to the Orange County Fair down South and saw Huey Lewis in concert.

HUEY LEWIS!!

And they have dancing cows, acrobatic horses, race car driving pigs, chickens that play ragtime on piano’s while smoking cigars… you know things people normally don’t see everyday - except if you live in Fontana. But Huey Lewis would never visit Fontana.

What could be better, right?

It all happened just after the visit to the chocolate covered bacon cart… Oh, in case you’re wondering, it’s basically salad-style bacon bits in chocolate clusters, but packaged in a Chinese take-out box. It’s like salty chocolate - Weird!
So there we were watching the Chinese acrobats holding live horses, on their heads, and then the horses were speaking Chinese and stuff (“Don’t drop us! Don’t drop us!” – I understand Chinese fluently) and then my daughter says “Daddy I’m not feeling good…”

“Don’t worry, they’re not going to drop the horses anymore…”

Two days later we’re at the doctor and while he’s telling us the news (“You’re daughter has Influenza A, subtype H1N1 othewise known as…”) I’m thinking to myself does that mean my family has to join some leprosy style camp now far away somewhere, like Fontana, separated from civilization?

Thankfully we weren’t sent to Fontana (Thank God!) It just meant my daughter was sick for 3 more days, which wasn’t too bad. But then my wife got bronchitis after getting the plague, but then recovered after the week. And fortunately nobody turned into a pig or started squealing while sleeping like I’ve heard so much about on ‘the News.’

The lesson learned: don’t ever go outside again.