Crumpled Home

RJ: Dad! I’ve got a new invention in the play room and I need you to be really careful!

Dad: Careful? Why? What is it?

RJ: I’m inventing a new disease. It’s really dangerous.

Dad: Oooo-kay… What does it do?

RJ: Well, when you catch it, you cough a little bit and then you feel a bit sick and then skin grows across your mouth and you can’t eat or drink anything!

Dad: That sounds awful!

RJ: It gets worse after that. Then you start bleeding, and THEN you die.

Dad: What on earth do you need a something like that for?

RJ: We need to be ready when the bad guys show up. This will be the only way to stop them.

Dad: Okay then. Try not to get it on your clothes.

(while eating breakfast… LR is playing computer chess, while RJ sings us some of his original hits)

RJ: (singing)
The worst germ,
That you can have,
Gives you a kind of vomit.
And diarrhoea, that is so bad,
That you can’t ever drink enough water.
And… So… You… Die…

LR: Good one RJ!

Dad: Yeah. Did you learn that one at school?

RJ: Nah. I just made it up now. That’s my cholera song.

(LR is wandering around with a surface thermometer in hand)

LR: Your turn, Dad. (click) 33 degrees… So…  Grammy, Dad and Mum were all 33 degrees.

LR: (checks herself) 34.5 degrees! Hmmm…

LR: (checks another part of her head) 35 degrees. Arrgh!

Dad: Why are you so worried about your temperature?

LR: Well… …. How hot do you have to be to have a fever?

Dad: I’d say three degrees more than normal means you’re pretty sick. Less than that isn’t such a big deal.

LR: I want to get my temperature up just a little bit more… (grinning) Because if I’m sick and have a fever, then I get to lay down on the couch and watch TV all afternoon!

(in the car, on the way to school)

RJ: Minty eyeballs… It’s a terrible sickness.

Dad: It does sound terrible.

RJ: Our cousins have it. P, M and their whole family, Aunty B and Uncle T.

Dad: What!? Where did they catch it from?

RJ: From Dora at Dora’s house. Dora went in the Poisonous Jungle and got sick. Then they caught it from her.

Dad: Is there a cure? Can they get medicine or something?

RJ: The only way to get better from minty eyeballs is to drink the nectar from a flower that grows from the tallest tree in the Tiger Snake Jungle.

Dad: We’d better plan a mission to find it.

RJ: There’s no way. There are too many tiger snakes…

RJ: They’re going to die, I presume.