The gamble of splurging during f lu season
OPINION: In the run-up to last weekend, I felt like I was living inside a boardgame called ‘‘Elude the Lurgy!’’ It would be patented by Hasbro, or possibly Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson.
This is because an aeon ago, when the carefree summer sun was still warming our days, my beloved and I cashed in some Airpoints and booked flights to Auckland. The flights were scheduled for several months later, at some point in the thendistant, barely imaginable future.
We had been lured by an email from Ticketmaster, announcing that Hamilton – the musical, not the city – was coming that winter to Auckland – the city, not the unincorporated Californian community.
Usually, notifications about gigs and productions go in the mental ‘‘meh, too hard’’ basket.
However, the Hamilton soundtrack had been on repeat in our household for months. My 3-year-old’s education on the American Revolution was coming along nicely.
My sons could sing sweetly about the Boston Tea Party. We booked the tickets – just for us adults this time, not for our miniature choir. Those Spark arena seats were eye-wateringly expensive, even in the nosebleed section.
And speaking of bleeding noses and watering eyes and other such maladies, it seemed an easy gamble to make in January that we would most certainly be filling those seats in late May. In summer, we were effortlessly brimming with health; positively rude with it. Golden-skinned and dusted with ocean salt. Well rested, relaxed. Insurance for those flights? Pah. We were practically invincible.
Fast-forward several months, and people around us were dropping like flies. A stomach bug was ripping through a primary school over here, a protracted head cold was making its presence felt for weeks over there. Friends were suffering through their second round of Covid. That insurance was starting to look like the most judicious box that I hadn’t bothered to tick.
We were trying to be sensible and avoid risk, but the stakes seemed higher with every passing day, and the dice was being rolled by just going about our lives. Send my daughter to daycare? Move forward three spaces and spin the Snotty Nose wheel of chance.
Go to a friend’s house for dinner? Take a shortcut through the Channel of Positive Emotional Development, but pull a card from the Viral Dodge and Weave deck.
Take the kids to soccer practice? Take a token from the Physical Wellbeing stack, but roll two die to see if the brisk autumnal air forces us back to the Hacking Chesty Cough zone.
It wasn’t an easy win, but we doubled down in the Field of Ardent Handwashing and cashed in our Sensible Bedtimes cards.
Last week we were finally buckling ourselves into our aeroplane seats. The show was brilliant. We had not thrown away our flu shot.
❚ Elise Vollweiler is a writer living in Motueka.