Chicken Pox

Thing 2 has the chicken pox!!!! Have you ever had the chicken pox?

When I was 7, I had the chicken pox real bad. They were in my ears. They were in my throat. They were in my unmentionables. I was at my mema's house when I got them and mom would fill panty hose full of oatmeal and put my in the bath tub to ease the itching. It was the first time I ever watched Anne of Green Gables and I sat in my mema's chair which was like a throne and no one else sat there. I would look at myself in the mirror, and wouldn't recognize myself, and run around the house screaming, "I just can't stand it !!!!" In climbing back onto the airplane, I still had chicken pox, and I remember my dad worrying that they might not let me on the flight, even though I had passed the period of cantagion. He came to the conclusion people 'would just think it was acne.' Then I learned what acne was. I held my face in terror that people would stare at me and point and laugh. As a child, that was my biggest fear: people pointing and laughing at me especially for things I didn't understand. I was timid and shy, and getting onto that airplane was encountering a dark terror. At seven I had my first encounter with my own vanity, and it has haunted me ever since.