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Same here! Smallpox scar, and my mother made sure I got exposed to chickenpox and “German measles”. Ugh. I had the most horrible case of itchy itchy chicken pox and was made to wear my little cotton Sunday School cotton gloves to keep from scratching them.

Being a girl, I escaped mumps, but Mom made sure my poor little baby brother caught it as a toddler. It was how responsible patents did it back then. Better to have daughters catch measles as a toddler than to catch it while pregnant as an adult, better to have sons catch mumps while toddlers, too, for obvious reasons.

I still remember getting the “Polio sugar cube” deposited on my tongue by a public health nurse at the A&P grocery store, mainly because my parents were so ecstatic this was now available to protect their child.

The mother of the little girl who lived up the street, who was younger than I, opted not to have her daughter get the sugar cube, and she got polio and then the braces on her little legs. When I was a bit older, I used to push her swing for her in her backyard, play Jacks and Go Fish and other little games with her, read to her, to cheer her up and be a sort of playmamate and “big sister” to her. I used to cry over her once I got home, though.

Her mother ended up being my 7th grade choir teacher. It was her never-ending sorrow that she did not let her little girl get the sugar cube. I may have cried even more over her. What a horrible guilt this poor sweet lady suffered.

Polio is still kicking around Pakistan, too.

Seeing the kids crippled by polio in Cambodia in the early 1990s was beyond heartbreaking. No braces, no wheelcairs, no treatment, no nothing. A few of them scuttled about on all fours, face-up, like upside-down spiders, with seriously deformed elongated and shriveled limbs. I really did think my heart would break into a million pieces. Even those in deveoped countries who witnessed the tragic spectacle of kids in braces and wheelchairs before vaccine was available had no clue how horrific that disease can be in countries without wheelchairs and braces. There’s more, but I’ll stop there, as it’s just too tragic.

Good observation about how hard it is to eradicate horrible diseases. We truly are at war with Nature in that sense, and our viral, bacterial and parasitical enemies are more formidable than we like to imagine.

I have a brother who is four years older than I am. When he started first grade he brought measles, mumps and chickenpox home to the rest of us. My mother had never had mumps and came down with it the same time I did. My father had all three when he was a child so he was the only one in the house that did not get sick that year.

I also remember waiting in line to get my polio sugar cube. My parents, like yours, were ecstatic that there was a polio vaccine.

My mother taught elementary school during the polio epidemic in the 1950s and had students who came down with polio. Most people were justifiably terrified of polio because there seemed to be no rhyme or reason why some children caught it and others did not. In retrospect, many more caught it than was known at the time, because they had mild cold-like symptoms, but thousands of children who caught it were not so fortunate.