My Grandkids are Little Petri Dishes

Visiting our grandchildren is like visiting a bat petting zoo

I love my grandchildren. And I say this even as I sit here hopped up on antihistamines and Zithromax after a week spent with the grandkids and their parents.

My husband and I fully planned for this trip months in advance. We had our COVID shots, both of them, as well as our booster. We were up to date with flu shots, shingles, pneumovax and every other vaccine you might think of. If there’d been a shot for ‘cooties’ you can bet we would have gotten it. Face masks and hand sanitizer were in abundance in my purse next to the Skittles and gummy worms.

But no matter how many shots I take or how robust my Haz-Mat suit and other PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), visiting our grandchildren is like visiting a bat petting zoo.

Forget about ‘containment’ and ‘social distancing.’ Who can resist the toddler running to give his “Meemo” a great big hug after a long absence, even if his sweatshirt is carrying the viral load of a barnyard and he’s extruding goo from one nostril? I couldn’t. Clearly, that first hug from my grandson was like a gift…and a super-spreader event.

Which, of course, means we need to talk about ‘community spread.’ Toddlers are notorious for touching everything and putting most of what they can touch into their mouths. For example, no matter what you tell them, that Easter egg-colored piece of chewed gum on the asphalt looks like manna from Heaven to them. You can only hope you have the reflexes of a cheetah in getting it away from the toddler before he snacks on it. I’m not sure what the virus lifespan is on “ABC” (Already Been Chewed) gum, and I don’t want to know, either. But I suspect it’s years, like the way prehistoric DNA is preserved in an amber-encased insect.

There is not enough penicillin mold on the congealed yogurt in your refrigerator to stop the spread of a toddler-born virus. Just like a toddler will mutate from an amiable, love-bug to a monkey-bred banshee, so, too, will the virus they have lovingly incubated from that park playground railing they licked. My grandson managed to spread whatever he was carrying to every single family member in attendance. We were falling like tin ducks in a carnival shooting range.

What started out as a common cold virus morphed almost immediately into a multi-headed Hydra. First, his sister got a croup-like cough that sounded like a seal in San Francisco Bay. Then “Gampa” came down with a headache and sore throat. Then “Aunt T-T” caught it, followed by “Meemo,” his oldest sibling and, finally, his father. Just imagine if the Greeks had used a ‘Trojan Pony’ stuffed with toddlers: much cuter but same outcome.

Notice I didn’t mention anything about mom. I’m guessing she had developed some sort of herd immunity from being around the kids all day. Think whatever you want but, after this, I’m convinced that the Black Plague was the result of a toddler who took a rat to Medieval day care for show-and-tell.

Luckily for us, none of this was COVID and we all recovered pretty quickly. Would I do it again? I’d bet my life on it; Again. After all, a grandchild’s love is the one immunization that can always use a booster, right?