Listen up, children, if your great-grandmother were alive today she would tell you the swine flu is nothing more than media-promoted mass hysteria visited on a country full of hypochondriacal sissies. Then she would explain what real suffering is, the kind she endured in the awful spring of 1956 when the plague took up residence in her foursquare on Kinnaird Avenue.

My sister and I were laid low first with the hard German measles, then mumps, then chicken pox, then cabin fever, back-to-back and house-bound for three months! The only saving grace in that dismal episode was the fact that mumps couldn't “go down” on her girls.

And kiddos, that innocuous H1N1 flu mist doesn't begin to compare with the nasty injection I received in a hot, dingy gymnasium at the old Emmaus Lutheran School on Broadway at the height of the polio epidemic. The mere anticipation caused such a severe panic attack that it took two strong homeroom mothers to hold me down so the nurse could administer the shot. The after-punch left my skinny first-grade arm so sore I could barely drag the extra kitchen chair to the dining room table when Grandpa joined us for dinner that evening.

Then there was that potentially fatal “dance with death” the time I played hooky and skipped school on a warm spring morning when I was 10. What started as a “sore throat” morphed into a lower abdominal misery that can only be compared to childbirth in its debilitating effect. Mother did her Florence Nightingale best and gave me a big dose of laxative, an unconventional and rarely prescribed antidote for an appendicitis attack. Throughout the years, I have wondered if perhaps God was using my mother as an instrument of punishment for my truancy.

But even in illness, sometimes, there is a silver lining. In my personal case, it came in the form of a beautiful geisha girl housecoat with a stand-up, mandarin collar, embroidered with golden thread presented on my hospitalization for my tonsillectomy. I remember I was the most beautiful, pathetic patient ever to take up residence in the pediatric ward at Lutheran Hospital.

Yes, even unfortunate accidents can sometimes deliver a bouquet of peculiar notoriety, like the time when I was 12 and broke my wrist. Due to my strict evangelical upbringing, the annual Sunday school roller-skating party was the high point of my social calendar. That particular evening I had not even veered around the first corner when the accident occurred. But, children, let this be a lesson to you. I nonetheless persevered through the agony and continued skating until the bitter end. When I arrived home, Mother said I looked pale. Two weeks later, exhausted from nights of fitful sleep and carrying a low-grade fever, it was with great pleasure I received the diagnosis from Dr. Stanley that, indeed, I had suffered a broken wrist and would need a cast!

With Christmas just around the corner, your own mother will recall the unforeseen results that occur when holidays and germs collide. Years ago on Dec. 20, your grandpa gifted the emergency room with his kidney stone. In the spirit of the season, the hospital presented him an epic case of influenza, which quickly spread throughout the family, giving new meaning to the World War II song, “I'll be Home for Christmas.” On the morning of the 25th, we all straggled into the living room to exchange gifts, unwrapped that year and presented in large black garbage bags.

And so it is. From diaper rash to dog bites, diarrhea to impacted wisdom teeth, children, every generation must resign itself to the fact that pain is a part of life. As you sip your 7Up and nibble your saltines, buck up. You, too, are making memories. Someday you'll be able to recount the tale of fall 2009 when alarming anxiety swept coast to coast, when hundreds stood in line, when vaccine supplies ran short and the president declared a state of national emergency!