When I was a kid there was a flesh-eating bacteria outbreak that took over the news cycle. It was all people could talk about...Flesh-eating bacteria, FLESH EATING BACTERIA...aahhh! In fairness, flesh-eating bacteria has a certain POP to it! It zings! It's like something out of a sci-fi horror story about aliens who disguise themselves as gas station toilet seats and then WHAM, invade your body and melt your insides. I remember reading about it with fascination like it was an HP Lovecraft story...until my dad actually got it. It started with a bad 7-11 egg salad sandwich, and yes...we made sure to make fun of him for making such a catastrophically bad dietary choice. But that spoiled sandwich triggered the use of a gas station bathroom or some public facility. Something that was fantastical/surreal became very concrete and we fell through a Lookingglass, ending up inside the horror movie we were watching. What was something I observed as a detached viewer flipped and I was was being watched....my family was being watched like we were in the movie and people were screaming at us 'don't eat that sandwich...the monster is coming for you idiot...don't go in that attic...RUN BOY RUN!' Ohh, this is real. Like REAL real. The initial diagnosis of food poisoning was the creeping horror that turned into surgery, cutting out several feet of intestines, months of healing, and the fear: is it really gone or will it come back? My dad had life-long scars and problems from that brush with bad fate. Ever since then whenever there is a new scare or pandemic I always wonder about fate, and how those seemingly distant things can meet you face-to-face. You hear about swine flu, SARS, Ebola, and things like Corona in places like Wuhan, China or West Africa. And -all of sudden- you get a knock on your door. You open it...see nothing...and close the door. But in that seemingly mundane moment, 'the thing' has crept in...while touching a doorknob, or sitting on the edge of a jacuzzi, or eating a sandwich from 7-11, or walking by someone as they cough in your face at the exact worst moment.
A few years later I was a wrestler in high school. Wrestlers get tons of skin diseases, rashes, and infections: it's the nature of sweating skin-to-skin with people on moldy school mats. I got my fair share of gross skin ailments. I went to dermatologists to get patches cut off, burned, medicated. And I always wondered if one of those minor skin diseases was 'the monstrous' terrible flesh-eating bacteria. It never materialized again. Just like with having asthma there was/is always low-key fear that any chest tightness or wheezing is the start of an asthma attack, you realize how vulnerable we all are. Alexander the Great died from the flu. Emperors and kings cut their finger and die painful deaths. How am I removed from this? I guess what I'm trying to say is STAY THE FUCK HOME. it's not a guarantee of safety, but you already have enough things lurking around out there trying to kill you.
A few years later I was a wrestler in high school. Wrestlers get tons of skin diseases, rashes, and infections: it's the nature of sweating skin-to-skin with people on moldy school mats. I got my fair share of gross skin ailments. I went to dermatologists to get patches cut off, burned, medicated. And I always wondered if one of those minor skin diseases was 'the monstrous' terrible flesh-eating bacteria. It never materialized again. Just like with having asthma there was/is always low-key fear that any chest tightness or wheezing is the start of an asthma attack, you realize how vulnerable we all are. Alexander the Great died from the flu. Emperors and kings cut their finger and die painful deaths. How am I removed from this? I guess what I'm trying to say is STAY THE FUCK HOME. it's not a guarantee of safety, but you already have enough things lurking around out there trying to kill you.
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