I still remember how awful that one scab was.
Don't touch it. Well leapt by bigger cousins nearly daily...

It hurt and it itched and I can't imagine those things being all over my body.

Polio especially. People stomped on that with both feet and lined their kids up immediately for that one. Images of kids in poorer countries with their legs all twisted up haunts me when it is such a preventable thing.

@BufftonBeotch I remember getting the polio vaccine, we had to drive to the next town over and stand in line for what seemed like forever. We had several kids in my town in iron lungs, the parents would build out buildings to house them, so they could have them at home and not in the hospital. There were also several people that had recovered and had to have braces and crutches to get around.

@BufftonBeotch Here is why.

U.S. COVID-19 Death Toll Reaches 900,000 Amid Omicron Surge

[huffpost.com]

@nogod4me Exactly. And yes the flu still kills people, but around 30,000 in an average year.

Except me....

I'm here too.
They vaccinated me in the armpit,
and it doesn't show much.

@Larimar You didn't get any vaccinations when you were a kid?

@mischl They tried my smallpox vaccination multiple times...I think three but can't remember. It wouldn't ever take. Doc said I must have immunity somehow because my body fought it off immediately and it wouldn't work. I was the only one in my grade without a scar. They stopped doing them when I was 10 years old.

@Larimar Gee whiz, I had so many vaccinations I can't possibly remember them. I had a dozen shots before the Air Force would send me overseas.

@mischl Oh, all the other ones took! Just the one they kept retrying. I began to think something was wrong with me. I remember crying the last time thinking it was going to be problematic.

@AnonySchmoose Oww! Geez. I can't imagine how many times that got rubbed and knocked off

@AnonySchmoose, @mischl My daughter went to Africa a couple times during college. So many shots! Also those huge "horse pills" as we called them for malaria.

@BufftonBeotch
Those scabs & scars probably caused anger in many kids. Though some scars resemble a little moon which is not that bad at all.
Your daughter - brave of her to have multiple shots. So many shots to travel far. I bet many young kid travelers are terrified of that. I was very scared until past grammar school. By then, some kids trained their minds for 'mind over matter' and being brave. And they had learned the shots would protect them. Until then though, it seemed like the nurses were doing an evil experiment on them. It was terrifying - the nurse was cold, impersonal, and in a hurry, so kids probably felt she didn't care about what would happen to them. I felt that I was there because something must be wrong with me.

@AnonySchmoose She was college age. A good solid reality immersion of how good we have it here.
Second time she was in Tanzania in actual huts where people have to haul the water every day.
She went with long hair. On nearly the first day they helped her shave her head so she could wash it with a rag like everyone else.

@BufftonBeotch
Your daughter had a really maturing experience. My male cousin went to Kenya and ( I think ) Botswana for a couple of years with AmeriCorps Vista to help farms to be successful.

@BufftonBeotch Jeeezus, that sounds like an incredible experience. I thought I'd been through some shit in Libya and the mud flats of Turkey. But the worst thing I got was food poisoning a couple of times and one case of gonorrhea.

@mischl Oh please. She was fine and enveloped in love. She still communicates with the people she was with.
the kids were fascinated with the southern US Love Bugs.
They swarm here in the summer.
front bumpers and windshields become a Guernica tapestry.