Lileks: Recalling the bad old days of flu shots

I wrote some breezy japery about the flu a few weeks ago, and some readers thought I was minimizing the need for a shot or the seriousness of the flu. This was not my intention at all, and I apologize if anyone inferred the wrong things.

So now I will intentionally minimize the need for a shot, so there's no misunderstanding.

Kidding! Believe me, I'm kidding. Everyone should get the shot, and here's why.

Before I get the shot: All doors opened with coat sleeve; coat sprayed with Purell, then burned. My wife had a mild cold, and I made her ring a cowbell every time she came into the room so I could cover my hands and head with Cling Wrap. (Pro tip: Poke holes in the nostril area.)

After I get the shot: A virtuous sense of indomitability. I feel as if I should wear a sticker like you get after you voted so that others can bask in my civic spirit. After all, by getting the shot, you increase the herd resistance. You're taking one for the team. I am also certain that I am immediately immune and could take a fire hose of straight, 100 percent flu virus right in the kisser and laugh. "Ha, ha, fiend born from duck guts!" I'm like Superman grinning as bullets bounce off my chest.

I went to one of those store clinics. It used to have a receptionist. Now there's an empty desk, as if she caught something bad and never came back. For your convenience, you have to type everything one-finger style on a screen that has been touched by hundreds of sick people. Note: It is hard to type by using your elbows, but I recommend it.

There's a series of questions, one of which should be: "Do you understand you will have to repeat all of this information to the nurse again, because for some reason the systems don't communicate?"

The first time I asked for a pneumonia shot, the nurse asked why I wanted it.

"Because I don't want to get pneumonia," I said.

"But you're not in the risk group."

"Have you ever had pneumonia? I have. I spent three days with a fever like I was in a sauna on Venus, and I dreamed Osama bin Laden was in the corner of the room smearing Sterno on the walls. I'll take the shot, please."

A sure sign of adulthood: You actually ask for a shot.

This may have been a booster shot, which was mixed with Tabasco and grain alcohol. Even if you batted away the light box because you knew what was coming, backed into a corner of the room and threatened everyone with a stethoscope — "I'll put this cold thing on your sternum! I'm not bluffing, I will!" — you still got a balloon.

"From my doctor for being good," it said.

This did not seem a fair trade. No kid ever says, "Can I have a balloon?" And the adult says, "Yes, but first I have to lance your buttocks with this hat pin." And the kid says, "Seems about right." You walked into the clinic, saw the other children coming out wet-faced with balloons, and you knew they'd been giving them the booster-butt business up there in the clinic.

You revert to being 4 years old when it's time to get a shot. Then you remember that modern shots are amazingly painless. Why? Because the kids who grew up getting an industrial augur in the keister went into the needle-improvement business, I suspect.

Two pokes, and that was it. As it turned out, my wife got her shot the same day, and we compared notes. Her nurse had said that "people with small arms" — something that immediately made me think of a T. rex — could minimize possible soreness by doing "wall push-ups," which seems like you're working the hand-crank on a water pump to get the medical juice flowin' down to the organs that know what to do with it.