Measles

At first measles didn’t sound so bad. It was just another one of those spotty diseases that everyone got. Of course you feel awful and have a fever and you itch, but it didn’t seem like a terrible disease until I got it. People talked about German Measles and just plain measles, but I don’t remember which was the bad kind.

When I was in fourth grade I got the bad kind. It wasn’t just itch and feel bad for a couple of days, no, it was at least a week of isolation and darkness – it seemed like weeks and weeks it was so awful.

Mother was anxious, almost panicked, about my having the bad measles. I didn’t know until then that my Grandmother had lost the hearing in one of her ears from having measles when she was a girl. I didn’t know that people with the kind of measles I had could go blind if they were in the light while they had it. I felt even sicker and worried when I heard about the bad things that could happen to me from having measles.

I was put to bed downstairs in Mother and Dad’s big bed in their little bedroom. I don’t know where they slept – maybe upstairs in my little bed. Their bedroom was a dark room. With the heavy curtains drawn over the windows it was just like night inside even when the sun was shining outside. I was supposed to keep my eyes shut all the time, just in case some light would come in. Mother put wet washcloths over my eyes to cool the fever and to keep them shut.

At first I felt so sick that it didn’t matter that I had to lie still in a dark room and couldn’t move and couldn’t read or do anything. But after a while I started feeling better and it was dreadful. The only thing that I had to look forward to was Dad reading to me after dinner. He would pull a chair up to the closed bedroom door so that I could hear him read while I lay in the darkness.

The book he picked to read was Tom Sawyer. His soft Kentucky accent was just perfect for the dialog and I could just picture Tom and his Aunt and his too-good brother. Night after night we followed Tom’s adventures until Dad’s voice would trail off and the words of the story would be replaced with a gentle snore as he dozed over the book. I didn’t dare wake him up – he would be so angry – and I just ached to hear more of the story. If only I could get out of bed and slip the book out of his lap and read it myself! But I couldn’t do that – I didn’t want to go blind -– oh! It was so frustrating!

One night we started on chapter 12. By this time I was feeling pretty well and was pretty fed up with staying in bed. I didn’t know how entertaining this particular evening was going to be.

In the story Tom was feeling low because the girl he liked was sick. Aunt Polly thought he was the one who was sick and started trying remedies on him. The descriptions of the “water treatment” had both of us smiling. Then came the “pain-killer” remedy and Dad began to chuckle as he read:

“Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must be broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to Pain-killer. She gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the result. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again; for the "indifference" was broken up. The boy could not have shown a wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.
Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit pon that of professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the sitting-room floor with it.
One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow cat came along, purring, eying the teaspoon avariciously, and begging for a taste. Tom said:
"Don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter."
But Peter signified that he did want it.
"You better make sure."
Peter was sure.
"Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't blame anybody but your own self."
Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. ..”

By this point Dad was laughing so hard he had tears running down his face. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t read for several long minutes. He finally choked out the final part of the chapter. Ever after that, you could always get a smile from him by reminding him of the time Tom fed the painkiller to the cat.

And I was just about done with measles and dark rooms and ready to return to school and finish reading Tom Sawyer myself.
There was only one after effect from being sick. I didn’t damage my eyes and I didn’t lose my hearing. But I had missed a lot of school, including a spelling lesson with the word “orange” in it. So for years I wasn’t sure how to spell “orange” and it was because of having the measles.