Shopping for Shingles

First came Black Friday, and I blew it. I bought nothing, unless you count that can of turkey gravy for the Thanksgiving leftovers. Then came Small Business Saturday and again I was a slacker, except for the sweatshirt for ten bucks I picked up for my son at the local Goodwill. (I doubt that Goodwill is a small business, seeing how in 2011 their various organizations earned $4.43 billion.) Now it's Cyber Monday, the very best day to shop online for incredible deals and amazing bargains and tremendous savings. I wish I needed something.

Somehow all this Christmas shopping has completely wiped me out, even though I haven't been shopping and I don't do Christmas. But apparently shopping for bargains is wildly popular, even more popular than getting shingles, which now affects one in three people during their lifetime. The funny thing about shingles is that when you have a kid and that kid's friend gets the chicken pox, the doctor tells you to take your kid over to that sick kid's house to play so he can catch it and get it over with because it's much better to get it younger. Twenty years ago, people in our little town of Takoma Park hosted chicken pox parties. And going back even further, I can still remember when my own mother dragged me next door to play with my infected little friend Suzanne.  Fast forward to today, when television commercials and print ads intone ominously, "If you had chicken pox as a child, the shingles virus is already inside you." Oy vay--run, don't walk, to the nearest syringe-wielding, white-coated physician's assistant or pharmacist.

So now I'm not sure what to do first: Shop online or get the shingles vaccine. If they sold those vaccines online I guess I would get one today, even though it is Cyber Monday and not Shingles Monday. But I guess that's coming; who knows, it might even be tomorrow, which of course would make it Shingles Tuesday, which is not very catchy. Better it should be a day later, on Virus Vendsday.