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I sat and watched my kids play Ring Around the Rosy tonight. Kinda freaked me out listening to them over and over. The meaning of it all kept going through my mind with each rendition. “Ring around the rosy” The mark of the Black Plague. A small rosy red sore with a black ring around it. These sores would show up early on the victims of the plague. This was a sign that you were almost surely going to die. “Pockets full of posy” To avoid the wretched stench of one who carries the plague, victims would fill their pockets with a posy of flower petals. As their sickness progressed, more posies would be required. “Ashes! Ashes!” in order to limit the spread of the plague, and partly because there was not enough well bodied people left to bury the bodies of the dead, they bodies were all burned in great bon-fires. This is actually where we get the term bon-fire. Bone Fire. “We all fall down!” What can you say about that. Pretty much shows the hopelessness. Once someone in your village brought in the plague (more likely a rat than a person but no matter) there was about this much hope that you would survive.

I wanted to tell them but I digressed. I don’t think it would be a good time and they might not even believe me. “Black Plague? Whoever heard of that?” I’ll give ‘em 10 years. When they won’t be playing that game and reciting that wonderful lyric anymore. I found out in Mr. Rigby’s AP World History class. It’s kinda cool when you’re in high school. Then you really start to think about it and it just makes you sick each time you hear it. Makes you wonder why they even started teaching it to kids or continue teaching it to them. It reminds me of the time a mother had a still-born baby and couldn’t afford a burial. She placed it in a box on the curb just outside my window. I was awakened by a commotion and quickly understood what everyone was doing running about just outside my bedroom. I was saddened, sickened by the thought of it. But I still felt that I had to look. Not like passing an accident on the freeway and you just want to see how serious it was and you contribute to the slow traffic that you have been cursing for the last 2 miles. More like seeing pictures of the Holocaust and understanding what really happened. I felt like I had to go see the baby’s body. And I did. And it was worse than I could have imagined. I literally felt sick to my stomach. If I had to do it all over again, knowing how it would make me feel, would I look? Yeah, I think so. Maybe the understanding is worth more than pain. Maybe the nursery rhyme is the best way to make kids understand massive plague and death when they get it explained to them later in life. I guess it’s better than living through a pandemic but losing half your family. Kinda makes you want to dance around in circles.

If you have been reading this blog since before it was a blog, then you probably are quite familiar with my ongoing internal struggle with the mighty Coca Cola. Well, I win. For months I’ve been throwing around the idea of a “Last Coke Party” where I invite all my friends and everyone watches me chug my last Coke. I kept putting it off cause I wanted everyone to be able to come. K, not over the holidays, too many people out of town. Not during the semester, too much going on. Not over spring break, I probably won’t be available. Not during the summer, that’s too far away. ‘Sides, I’ll be busy with a new baby in the summer. Hmmmm. During Fall semester, I had a fitness class where I started only drinking it on weekends. I lost 15 pounds in the first 2 months without even really trying. So then I got cocky and thought just a few during the week wouldn’t hurt. Well I put all 15 pounds back on in one week. From then on I went back to the just weekends thing. Back down 15 pounds by the end of the class. In fact I started doing so well that I could just walk right past it in the store. Then they came out with this Black Cherry Vanilla stuff that I just had to try. (That way when it was gross, I wouldn’t even be tempted.) But then it turned out to be pretty fantastic. What started out as just one almost turned into a full fledged addiction again. So I started weaning myself off of it just because I knew I should. Then the thinking about the party again. Hmmmmm. I just decided I had had enough. All it takes is a little commitment right? So I didn’t even drink my last one after that. I’m just done. I know. I know. You’re all thinking “yeah right. I’ll give him two more days.” But it’s now been 2 weeks. No more headaches. No more heart burn. No more shortness of breath. And no more throwing away the money. I’ll weigh myself one of these days and see what’s happening there. It’s funny, just a little commitment. That’s all it takes. Now I see why so many men are afraid of this commitment stuff. It’s so binding.