I Have Scabies
We think of Canada as innocuous. A simple place
of kind people who have progressive ideas and fun accents. You probably
would not be surprised if I told you that Canadians are, on average, happier
than Americans. You would, on the other hand, be quite surprised if I
told you Canadians are in the midst of a biological attack on America.
Well they are. Canadians are giving us Scabies.
Last week my girlfriend went to Canada to study transboundary environmental
conservation issues with a group of very clean, healthy, and not-at-all-itchy
Americans. They stayed in a Canadian hostel of questionable cleanliness
and associated with Canadians of questionable character. Upon her return
we promptly shared a bed. A day later she and other members of her class
began to be develop hives, rashes, and a persistent itch of abnormal magnitude.
They began to visit doctors and were diagnosed with Scabies. It sounds
sexually transmitted, it sounds like something a pirate might get, it
rhymes with rabies and babies (two things I have succeeded in avoiding).
But I was not able to avoid scabies.
Scabies is a condition caused by a mite. This mite is attracted to the
warm and smelly parts of the body and, once there, burrows into the flesh
where it likes to lay its eggs. This is really fucking gross but it’s
not the eggs that cause the distress. After laying, the punk ass mite
then produces toxins that cause a massive allergic reaction and sets the
body to itching. And itching and itching and itching, sometimes preventing
all other activities, especially sleep.
Scabies is an old disease, you can tell by it’s name. Newer diseases
are often acronyms or laden with big latin-sounding physiological words.
Old diseases, on the other hand, have awesome and scary names like scurvy,
botulism, or consumption. Scabies is a great scary disease name which
is proper, because it’s been around for at least 2,500 years (since
around the dawn of civilization.) Just one more price we pay for having
cities, scabies is a pain in the ass, but it’s not very dangerous.
Nowadays whenever someone gets scabies they just slather on some insecticide
and the rash is gone in a week.
And that’s what we did. 5% permethrin from head to foot followed
by half a day at the Laundromat washing everything we’ve touched
in the past week seems to have foiled Canada’s plan to cripple our
household.
It’s safe to say, from our experience, that Canada does not have
a lot of enthusiasm for biological warfare. In fact, one might question
whether Canada is attacking us at all, and if they are, why?
I believe I have the answer. Canada has spent the past fifty years making
their country the sort of place where an American might want to live.
Their citizens are respected internationally, healthcare is free, their
entire accumulated national debt is roughly equal to how much debt Bush
generally accrues in a single year, and I hear they have pretty bitchin’
film festivals. I think they did this, not so that we would defect, but
so that we would learn from their example, and make our government adopt
similarly progressive policies.
But Canada can no longer count on the empty promises of dissatisfied Americans.
I believe they have concluded that, if Americans are too itchy to sleep,
we might find time to do something about our seemingly irrational policies.
It’s an ingenious plan, but their technique must be refined as I
was cured too quickly. Washington and Iraq still don’t matter to
me. I don’t have time to think about national debt or global warming.
I don’t seem to care who is dying in my name or what is being done
with my money.
I couldn’t ignore the itch, but I can ignore the atrocity. And so
tonight, I‘ll sleep just fine.
For a full year I wrote a weekly column for a daily paper in Boulder CO. I wrote about being young, poor and green, and the column was widely loved throughout the city. It remains one of the most rewarding things I've ever done.
If you've got some time on your hands...check 'em out.
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