Seven Red

I guess we’ll always remember our first Chicago “snowstorm” (we got about four inches). As the snow was falling, we noticed that babygirl was screaming like a banshee anytime she tried to eat anything, and a strange rash – no diaper rash, this – was spreading across her legs and butt. So we packed into the car in took a trip down to the pediatrician on Clyborne, a perilous journey in the snowy dark, but thank Nixon for our HMO. The doctor, who appeared to be about 17, did the usual symptom questioning, trying to determine what babygirl was “presenting as,” then immediately grabbed for her foot. Blisters on the heel. Sore throat. Excessive drooling. Blisters on the hand. Diagnosis? Hand, foot, and mouth disease, a common childhood virus. What can we do? Nothing. Ride it out. Popsicles, she said.

Fair enough. I guess what I find humorous is the name of this particular ailment. I mean, “hand, foot, and mouth?” It all sounds vaguely unscientific and pre-modern. What will babygirl catch next? The Vapours?

But I managed to escape from the the clutches of 40,000 bikers, and got the Christmas tree home in one piece (due largely to my uber-masculinity and general patriotic fortitude). babygirl is scared of the tree and amused by it, in equal proportions.

I have a long-standing prejudice against bikers. Not Critical Mass bikers, but leather jacket wearing, beard-sporting, American-flag-flapping-on-the-handlebar, Harley-ridin’ bikers. They scare me, for real. I often explain this prejudice with completely nonsensical evidence, my primary argument being that a biker could slit your throat in a bar and never get caught (because they all look the same, and maintain a code of silence), so they are inherently dangerous, because without fear of authority. I know this is bone stupid. It’s one of the many bone-stupid arguments I deploy to justify some of my stupider beliefs.

So yesterday I went out to buy our Christmas tree. I pulled the car around to Western and Ainsle, where St. Matthius Transfiguration school had a tree sale going, and started shaking the trees. Suddenly police cars started closing up the streets running into Western. The gruff tree salesman said “I hope you plan to be here awhile.” Why? What’s going on? It’s the Toys for Tots Motorcycle Parade, is what. He decided it was silly to converse with anybody as dumb as me about it, but when he was talking to one of the cops, I heard the number 40,000. Huh? 40,000 what? That would be 40,000 participants in a motorcycle parade, which is to say, 40,000 bikers. And here I am, stuck in a lot! Oy.

So here they came, rumbling north on Western, bike after bike, revving it up, waving at the fast assembling crowds, all leather and beards and muscles and scowls and Kaiser helmets. And presents and kids and smiles and Santa hats.

What a nightmare!