The School Nurse is So Boss

In keeping with the theme of sick kids... Because I just wanna talk about it, okay?! Last Friday I sent Boy-Child#2 off to school with a cold. Probably the one that is currently torturing Girl-Child; but the snot factor wasn't as severe. He mainly had an extremely irritating hacking cough. It started out as a stealthy sniffly nose on Tuesday of last week. Which meant by Friday he'd already exposed his entire class and whoever the heck it is he plays handball with on the playground (kid has mad skillz with the handball game); and whoever he happened to just randomly lick. No. He doesn't do that. Anymore. Not since he was like two. So, come Friday morning, one hour after slowing my car to a crawl and forcing my son out of the slow moving vehicle and shouting "tuck and roll baby!" dropping him off; I get a call from the school nurse to come and get him. Are you shitting me?? "Oh, heeellll no" she informs me. Because once the teacher has sent the child to the office with a note to get them as far away from the classroom as possible the nurse is required to summon the parents. Okay. Fine. Once I get there Mrs. Nurse is all ready to dish. She leaned in close and kinda sideways towards me. A signal, in woman's terms, that things are about to get a bit catty. She instantly garners my respect for being, you know, a normal person and not some uptight bourgeois elementary school bureaucrat. She thinks it's a tad ridiculous that the teacher wants him sent home for just a cough. She thinks the teacher was just bothered by the ruckus he was creating. He's not running a fever, she notes. "It's just a cough" "Yep, just a cough", I agree. "Could last for 2 weeks, ya know?" "Totally", I agree some more. She leans in closer. I shiver and am a little bit in love with her. "You know, I had a mother once tell me that she didn't want her son coming to my office for any reason because of, you know, other kids germs" GASP! "No way", I say. "Yeah. I wanted to tell her that there are more germs in the classrooms than there are in here". And here is where I high-fived her because ever since the start of school in the fall, Boy-Child#1's sixth grade class has been unable to stop the spread of Strep-Throat. About once every two or three weeks, a note is sent home to inform the parents that it has taken another victim and "oh, by the way, in case you don't remember this from the last 18 notices sent home; here are the signs to look for". Boy-Child#1 has had it TWICE in two months. And I'm all giving Mrs. Nurse the kudos because an actual TEAM is coming in to disinfect the streptococcus ridden classroom. TEAM! I imagine they're doing it when the room is empty but I say it's high time to throw some bleach on those kids! Mrs. Nurse could be my newest BFF. Our conversation was cut short by her ringing phone. She gave it a dirty look. And I grabbed her boob bid her adieu.