Are We There Yet? •
• LORI CLINCH Clinch clan in the flu's clinches
Although it's only mid-fall, we Clinches have already had our flu season.

We weren't willing victims, I'll give you that! We waged a war, put up a valiant fight and battled the enemy until the last man was standing and he was holding up a white flag and begging for mercy.

It started with our darling Charlie. With a high fever, body aches and chills, he climbed into our cherished Suburban last week and said, "I'm sick, Mom, real sick."

Being a woman who sees the glass as half full, I asked with optimism, "Was it something that you ate?"

"No," he said as he leaned his head against the window, "I think I have what all of the other kids have."

"Bed head and halitosis?" I asked still hoping for that half-full glass.

"No, Mom. I have the flu!"

More horrifying words are never spoken. "How could this have happened?" I asked with disbelief. We'd turned down play dates, dinner invitations and trips to the mall. We practiced hand-washing techniques, doused ourselves in antibacterial products and fell just short of wearing a respirator mask to the dinner table.

"Cough into your elbow, honey," I exclaimed on the ride home. "Here, use some Purell! Wipe down your book bag and for the love of Pete, discard those Kleenexes!"

We gave him a room of his own, disinfected light switches and laundered his clothing in hot water.

Nearly a week passed without another affliction. Thinking that we were out of the woods, I gave myself a pat on the back, did a mental hat dance and went about my merry way.

I was blissfully ignorant of the flu's latent period right up until Huey started coughing and Lawrence got the chills. Within days of each other one was sneezing and the other unable to swallow. Worried that this rendition of the virus would leave no immune system unscathed, I began shaking in my boots.

As I rounded the corner with a tub of antibacterialwipes and a garlic necklace, I ran into our eldest son, who was home on fall break.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm totally heading back to campus," Vernon said as he depleted the cupboard of groceries as if we were his own personal supermarket.

"But I haven't even finished your laundry!"

protested.

"There's no time for that, Mother dear," he said. "I don't know if you realize it or not, but I'm a busy individual with little or no time for illness. You people are sickly and I think it best if I hit the road before it becomes

full-blown pandemic."

And with that he tossed in what was left of our Cheese Nips and drove off into the sunset.

Vernon wasn't the only one who

feared succumbing to the clutches of the flu. I was petrified to say the least, and the power of suggestion was knocking at my door.

"Is that a sore throat?" I asked myself. Pat!" I then exclaimed to my beloved spouse,

I think I have a sore throat!"

"You don't have a sore throat," he responded as if saying it made it so.

"No, wait? Is it? Yes, I think it is. I think I have a headache."

"Lori," he responded as he turned from page two to three of the paper, "you don't have

headache."

OK, I mumbled to myself. Maybe I don't have a headache. But is that a fever? "Pat, feel my forehead!"

He held a hand out, and although I doubt he could have felt the heat coming off a hot poker,

pressed my forehead against his palm and awaited his prognosis as if he were the surgeon general.

"No fever," he replied. Despite Pat's denying that it could ever be so, the flu got me and she pulled me down hard. Body aches, chills and lungs that cried out for a reprieve. Don't get me started on the general malaise.

Then Vernon, our beloved college-age son, called and announced with great disdain, "I've got it, Mom, I've got it bad."

"What do you have?" I asked. "The same thing all of the other kids have!"

"Bed head and halitosis?"

"No! I feel like someone beat me with a bag of bolts and my stomach is rolling like a ship on

stormy sea."

Oh, the audacity of this ailment, striking down Vernon, an important college man who has little or no time for illness. Of all the nerve …

Maybe he should have spent less time with the Cheese Nips and gone for the large bottle of Purell.

Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book "Are We There Yet?" You can reach her at www.loriclinch. com.