Your axle has broken, your oxen have died, and you are sick from dysentery.

My kid has scarlet fever.  Just one kid, so far, though when one goes, they all go, so I’m just waiting for Liam to break out in a rash.  I’ve known a boy who had this recently, so when the pediatrician gave us the diagnosis, I already knew that it is no longer a scary disease like it was in the pioneer days, and an antibiotic would clear him up right quick.

However, now I keep thinking about playing The Oregon Trail on the Apple II computers in my elementary school computer lab.  People my age were the first to even have a computer lab in elementary school – I think Apple IIgs was essentially the second generation of personal computers, wasn’t it?  Do those of you peeps in your mid-thirties remember the graphics on this game?  Let’s just say the bulk of the experience was left to the imagination – but boy did I ever imagine my heart out.  I’d be out there, on the trail, my hair in Laura Ingalls Wilder pigtails, wearing a dress of muslin, perhaps even sprigged muslin, with button up boots, sitting on a flour barrel in the back of the covered wagon, chewing on some salt pork, clutching a rag doll and peering out at the wide, wild prairie.  I couldn’t have told you what muslin was, nor what salt pork tasted like (probably gross), but I was well-primed by the Little House books to have vivid daydreams about life on the Oregon Trail.

I’m glad scarlet fever, typhoid, dysentery, and small pox are no longer life threatening concerns for me and my little family.  Nor are we dependent on oxen, wooden wagon wheels, or dusty, poorly kept roads for our survival.  Nope, nowadays we spoiled folks get to ride the Honda Pilot Trail down to the General Wal Mart Store to get our Healing Elixer from the Pharmacy.  Then we set ourselves down on the couch, instead of a rickety wooden seat – and we watch Thomas the Tank Engine, instead of the rolling prairie – and drink lots of juice, instead of bacterium infected river water – and we cuddle.  I’d guess that that’s one thing that hasn’t changed since pioneer days – babies still need their mamas to cuddle when they’re sick.

So I’d better go do it.