How Much Easier It Is For Kids Today

The first heat wave of the summer inevitably resulted in its first sunburn as we Children of the 50s not having home air conditioning or video games flocked to local swimming holes. Our upper arms turned a bright and painful red except for a dime-sized spot that remained blindingly white - our vaccination scar. It was like a tribal ritual marking. "When a child reaches the age of instruction, he or she must endure a painful scraping of the upper arm as a talisman against the evil Smallpox Devil even though no one in the tribe has experienced the Devil's presence."

Apparently, smallpox was not eradicated by 1965 because I had to be re-vaccinated before Lafayette College would allow me to matriculate there. Naturally, I jostled the scab the next day. It fell off and the good stuff below evaporated. I never developed a second smallpox-defeating scar. "That freshman lacks a fresh vaccination scar. Kick him out of college and inform his Draft Board that he is eligible for military service!" Can't have that. I wore long sleeves until graduation.

What was the "good stuff" anyway? How did smallpox vaccination work? A recent issue of the New Yorker spills the beans. Cattle were infected with a virus similar to smallpox. They broke out into pus-filled sores. That pus, chock-full of antibodies, was extracted and combined with a stabilizing agent. The vaccine-recipient's skin was cut and rubbed raw to get to the blood-rich dermal layer. The "good stuff" was applied. A scab formed to protect the "good stuff" as it worked its way into the recipient's blood stream.

In other words, we Children of the 50s had to have disgusting pus from sick cattle injected into our bodies before we we allowed to go to school.

Today, smallpox is eradicated and kids no longer have to endure vaccination against it. We oldsters can add "We had to be vaccinated" to our litany of "How Much Easier It Is For Kids Today":

"We had to walk to school, uphill, both ways, in blizzards"
"Teachers were allowed to hit us with wooden paddles or rulers."
"We had to learn cursive penmanship, including that tricky capital Q that looks like the number 2 only bigger. Where did that come from?