Flu Shot

For the first time since I got a barrage of shots from the US military I actually got a flu shot, but only because it was free and scheduled about 150 feet from my desk, not because in the past few years I've had a penchant for getting sick around the holidays. Certainly not because I missed Christmas two years in a row because I was hacking up a lung. Nah. Free and easy.

Of course I tried about a month ago to get a flu shot. A Doctor at our company thought he had the inside scoop on a free shot clinic. It turns out the info was given to him and ALL of NYC via Channel 4 News. To say the least, the line was looooong and slow and I gave up after waiting 2+ hours with 700 people still in the queue ahead of me. There were a lot of reporters there and a lot of photographers too

About the shot though -- it got me thinking to how horrible a shot used to be when I was a kid. It fucking HURT. I would cry before, during and after the bad man in the white coat worked his cruel medicine on me. My mother would bribe me with McDonalds afterwards, or sometimes tell me I would not be getting a shot and then distract me at the Doctor's office while someone snuck up on me and jabbed me. Oh the betrayal.

These days it doesn't hurt at all to get a shot or give blood. It's really quite painless. But then I got to thinking -- maybe it still hurts just as much as it did, but all the bullshit and pain life has dished out has made the prick of a shot pale in comparison.

You get older. You get tougher. Like my drill sergeants were fond of saying, "Pain is just weakness leaving the body!"

Hoohrah.