Because I’m in my Seventies and male and thus a prime candidate to contract the dreaded Coronavirus, family members are keeping a close watch on me. “How are you feeling?” they ask. Well, here’s how: I feel as if I’m back in middle school, when my classmates had nicknamed me “ Richard Many Diseases.” A play on the American pronunciation of my last name, I presume, but then again—maybe more than that.
Turns out my mother embraced a policy that no child of hers should ever be permitted to call in sick. So what she did whenever I was coughing or running a fever was, she’d whip up a poultice known as a “mustard plaster.” Not exactly sure what all was in it, but it stank of horseradish and burned like the dickens when she taped it to my chest. Then she’d bundle me up and send me off to school.
Supposedly, the mustard plaster would draw out the invasive bug while preventing others from catching it, because who wants to be anywhere near the odoriferous carrier known as Richard Many Diseases?
Excepting unpleasant flashbacks to middle school, I’m here to report that I’m feeling just fine, albeit a bit lonely now that I’m no longer at liberty to come and go as I please. Looking out my front window, I see no one and hear nothing—except for the other day when the girls next door decided to perform a violin recital in their driveway. From our front porch, Anne and I enjoyed a balcony view, and soon other neighbors came stumbling out their doors into the sunshine, drawn like the fabled rats of Hamelin to the sound of music. We kept our distance from one another of course, but still, I recognized a woman from two doors down who is one of a local singing trio calling themselves The Saliva Sisters—who, as you can imagine, aren’t getting many bookings nowadays.
I snapped this photo of the Hulse Sisters from a safe distance with my 550 mm super telephoto lens. I had to stand so far back that I damn near intruded into the air space of the young couple who live across the street. Don’t know their names, but they seem nice. Too bad they live so far away.