They give you a button, too
Side effects? Yes, I have some side effects. I feel optimistic. Almost giddy. Better than I have in months.
Sue and I went to Bakersfield Heart Hospital recently to get the first of two vaccines for COVID-19. The second one is scheduled for Feb. 5 and I’m looking forward to more side effects including the excitement of getting in a car and taking a road trip, and boarding an airplane. Dinner up close with friends and family would be nice too. I’m also hankering to shake hands again without worrying about it being a breach of public health etiquette.
“How did you get one so soon?” a friend asked. “You’re not an essential worker.”
I’m not an essential worker? I’m essential to the mental health of my family, my community, people whom I have not yet met but when I do their lives will be significantly improved.
If that’s a stretch, we are in the magic age group that some people — our kids — describe as “old” and others with more experience call “just getting started.”
Sue had heard that Bakersfield Heart Hospital was offering the vaccine and she had driven over the day before we got ours to check.
“Come back tomorrow,” the woman said. “You don’t need an appointment.”
Tomorrow. No appointment. Did I hear the word “free” too?
Sue was ready to go at 11:45 a.m. the following day but I wasn’t. It was lunchtime and I was microwaving some delicious flautas filled with chicken. I said, “I’ll be there in 15 minutes. Save me a place.”
The flautas looked like taquitos. Flauta, and this may come as a surprise, means flute in Spanish but the taquito is every bit as flutelike as the flauta. If there were holes in the top, you could play a Spanish love song.
I Googled it and learned that taquitos are made of corn tortillas while flautas are made of flour tortillas. Corn/flour, taquitos/ flautas, whichever you choose, I recommend having four before getting your COVID shot. No one has ever fainted after eating a flauta or a taquito except if they were overwhelmed with how good they tasted.
There was a line in front of the door at the heart hospital but fortunately Sue was near the front. One of the best things about being married is having your spouse save you a spot in line.
“I can’t let you in here,” she said. “What about the other people who have been waiting? Plus, I’ve already filled out some paperwork.”
I couldn’t tell whether she was serious or mad at me for eating four flautas. Whatever the reason, she wasn’t letting me cut in and I trudged to the back of the line where I tried to make new friends, the old ones not doing me much good.
A tall, red-haired woman from the hospital handed me a clipboard with a four-page questionnaire.
“You’re a South High Rebel too, aren’t you?” she said.
I thought about asking her what class she was in but I didn’t want to tell her what class I was in so I just nodded.
Thirty minutes later we were inside. I sat next to a woman who could have been in the same class as me had she gone to South. She said generally she had bad luck in life: Her husband had died a year and a half ago, they often bungled her order at fast food places — giving her fries when she didn’t want them and not including them when she did —and that one time she had been locked in a manicurist room and they had forgotten about her for a half hour.
That probably wasn’t fun. You think you’re going in for a mani-pedi and suddenly all you can think about are the flautas you didn’t eat before you came in.
My name was called 30 minutes later. The male nurse asked me to roll up my left sleeve in order to expose my deltoid. He took out a needle and shook it after cleaning the deltoid area.
“You’re going to need a bigger needle than that,” I said, motioning to my deltoid.
He laughed. I wasn’t sure whether it was with me or at me.
My deltoid hurt the next day as if I had been socked in the arm. The kind of thing that happens in high school. Especially at South when your deltoids aren’t sufficiently developed yet.
They gave us buttons. Who doesn’t like a button? A button or the prospect of greeting the world again?