My brother and I were about 7 or 8 years old when a big event happened. We were playing Cootie in the living room when Mom and Dad walked in, announcing that they had really good news. We stopped playing immediately. Could it be a trip to the ice cream store? Or better yet, the comic book store?
Mom said, “A doctor has discovered a cure for polio! Everyone gets to be vaccinated. It’ll be at Parkway Junior High this Saturday and we have to be there at 11 a.m.”
My brother and I were silent. We were young, but we knew a vaccination meant a shot. Some shots, like the one for tuberculosis, really really hurt. Some shots were in places that made it a little sore to sit down. I am sure we must have looked like we’d been double-crossed.
Dad jumped in and said, “And after, we’ll take you to Gayle’s for a banana split.” Oh, great! Banana splits came once a year, if that. So this means it’s really going to hurt, it’ll be in our butts, and the needles will be 3 feet long.
Knowing it was pointless, my brother asked, “Do we have to go?”
Dad explained that this was a great thing for us. He told us that polio was the reason one of our friend’s sisters was crippled. We’d thought she’d been born that way.
Then mom said we wouldn’t get a shot. They’ll put the medicine on a sugar cube and we’ll just eat it, she said.
I asked if my friends Cathy and Jimmy had to do it too. Mom said yes, but we wouldn’t see them because it was being administered alphabetically.
We were still a little scared when we went to the school that Saturday. We lined up with the Ks and saw a bunch of kids that didn’t go to our school. There was a row of tables and nurses in white hats, standing there. What was unbelievable were all the pink-and-white C&H boxes full of sugar cubes. I never saw so much sugar in my life!
I don’t remember the medicine having any kind of taste. It just tasted like pure cane sugar. We were done in seconds! It was banana split time, and all we’d had to do was eat a sugar cube! It felt like we’d put one over on our parents.
As we grew up and our horizons expanded, we met many people whose lives had been adversely impacted by polio. My mom later told us it was a parent’s biggest fear, but was seldom discussed to avoid jinxing the family. We owe Jonas Salk (who developed the first polio vaccine) a huge debt of gratitude, along with all of the other vaccine discoverers. Gratitude also for Dr. Alan Melnick and the Clark County Public Health officials who work to keep our kids, and our adults, and our seniors, safe!
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