Kids . . . They are Full of Germs

I thought I was going to return home today for the first time in over three weeks, to pick up Ian and bring him to the beach-- but he's running a fever and his throat hurts . . . and then my son Alex, who was also supposed to come for a few days with his girlfriend, called me and told me he and Ava are both running fevers and have sore throats and all their friends have strep so they are going to the Healtch Center tomorrow morning to get tested and get some antibiotics-- apparently everyone returned to college with various viruses and germs, and they partied and went to concerts and basement shows and bars and hung out in small apartments and dorm rooms and got each other sick-- so while my wife got up early this morning and brought some stuff home and then headed to her classroom to get it set up (with the help of my cousin Kim) I spent a quiet and contemplative (and slighly hungover) day at the beach . . . I walked the boardwalk and took a bike ride to Jody & Jodee's Fish Market, where they serve all kinds of fish sandwiches-- I had a red snapper sandwich and it was delicious and this place is quite a scene-- it's a bit inland, on Route 35, and while beach clientele come in to buy fresh seafood, the lunch crowd was blue-collar and very salt-of-the-earth and very chatty-- they discussed ghosts and shootings and poltics (both sides are liers) and proper uses for ketchup (NOT on seafood) and everything looked excellent and I will return . . . hopefully, I will return to many of these spots that I discovered on this long vacation . . . and I'm also very thankful that I did not contract any illnesses from the many visitors we had-- because I'm about to wade into a sea of high school students and all the various germs that they harbor.