My daughter's in the middle of coughing her head off. It happens about five times a year, mostly in the winter. As soon as the house gets closed up and school starts, the kids get sick. I'm not sure which is worse: how bad you feel for your kid or how much of a beating one of you has to take at work to stay home. But that's another thing altogether.

My girl's deal is that she feels basically fine, but has (maybe - it's sort of unclear) cough-induced asthma, so while other kids cough and sneeze and it's kind of sad, she coughs for maybe an hour straight. The capillaries in her face break. Every once in a while she pukes.

It's possible that since she started taking the $150 special anti-asthma medicine it's less bad. Though it's kind of hard to tell. Insurance "covers" it, which means we pay for it out of our deductible.

But I'm pretty happy, actually, that's the worst thing that's wrong with her. I watch the Jimmy Fund telethon during the Red Sox games and I'm broken-hearted to think about those families who have children with cancer. And the kids who tell their stories seem so happy. They're incredibly strong. I don't know if I'm that strong or not. I kind of doubt it.

Did we get this sick as kids? I remember having mono in high school, and being at what seemed like death's door, but I didn't even go to the hospital or anything. I was just kind of a wuss. I broke some bones (memorably a wrist playing baseball when I was about 11, which made it so I had to wear a garbage bag over my left arm while swimming at summer camp), and there can't be much that hurts more than that. But I don't remember any bad colds from elementary school.

Of course, I had them. We must have been this sick. There would be a study or something. We know the earth's temperature has increased by a degree or something over the last 16.9 months. We'd know if all of a sudden way more kids were missing days of school with a cold. It's just that we don't remember that we ever had one. It's a cold.

Somehow that makes me feel better. Sure, it's brutal to see kids laid out with a 103 fever or walking around in a book with a broken foot - of coughing for an hour straight - but it clearly doesn't leave a lasting impression. At least not a negative one.

I'm a firm believer that kids are more allergic to things now (that's definitely true - there's no way we used to have to ban peanut butter from the lunch room) because they don't have to fight off as much disease anymore. By making everything antiseptic, we don't give the immune systems enough to do, so the immune system attacks stuff that doesn't much need attacking.

Wait, but didn't I just think kids get sick more than ever and wish it weren't so?

I guess it's good if they get sick, and good if they don't. That seems pretty Crooked.