My mother heard about it, and warned that we all needed flu shots immediately, lest Eve's cough turn into a plague, complete with raining frogs, swarming locusts and boils. LaVeta concurred, and last Friday she took both Eve and 5-year-old Little Solomon to the doctor. Eve got some medicine for her cough because she was too sick to get a flu shot. The boy wasn't so lucky.

LaVeta tried to tell him the flu shot would make him feel better. It didn't work. When Little Solomon saw the needle, medical personnel had to be summoned to control him. There were tears, bleeding and bandages. And that was just the nurses.

When the boy got home, he took vengeance by pestering his sick sister, and though I don't approve of his methods, he apparently listens when I tell him to be the best at whatever he does, because he is the best pest on the planet.

Friday to Saturday, he proved it by making Eve's life miserable. He poked her feet. He poked her arms. Then, when he was sure she was too sick to fight him off, he moved in for the kill, because pestering is best done in close quarters.

"Stop, Solomon!" Eve yelled, loud enough for me to hear.

I looked across the room and saw him putting his fingers near her nose. "Solomon, get out of your sister's face," I warned. "You're gonna get sick."

"OK," he said in the singsong voice he uses when he pretends he's going to listen.

Two minutes later, he was once again playing patty-cake with Eve's germs.

The next day, the boy was laid out on the couch. He was coughing and lethargic. He had a temperature and a stomachache. At one point, he looked at LaVeta and said, "It feels like somebody's trying to kill me."

After another doctor's visit, he was held out of school. And thanks to my mother-in-law nursing him for a day, Little Solomon was so thoroughly pampered that the history of health care in the Jones household was forever changed.

LaVeta could see it when she came home from running errands and took over nursing duties from her mom.

Everything around Little Solomon looked the same: Soup was on the table. Cartoons were on television. His medicine was close by. But when LaVeta tried to return to nursing as usual, his facial expression was that of an A-lister whose Perrier has been chilled to 48 degrees instead of 40.

"Can you fan me?" he asked LaVeta.

"Fan you?" she asked, as images of Egyptian Pharaohs came to mind.

"Yes, because that's what Grandmom Eva did. She fanned me."

Apparently, Grandmom Eva also had put a wet washcloth on his stomach. When LaVeta offered to do the same, the boy turned it down.

"I want it cold," he said, "because my stomach is hot on the inside."

LaVeta gave in to his demands. "Do you want me to rub your feet, too?"

"Yes."

"Why, because that's what Grandmom Eva did?"

"Yes."

Grandmom Eva also had cut up the noodles in his chicken-noodle soup and fed them to him, forcing LaVeta to take her nursemaid game to another level.

Little Solomon is a lot better now, but I've got a feeling he's still got a few of those germs in his system. I'm thinking of drinking from his glass so I can get sick, too. Since LaVeta's in a nursing mood, I could use a little fanning right about now.

Oh, and I'll take my foot rub with a bottle of Perrier. No warmer than 40 degrees, please. My stomach is hot on the inside.

Solomon Jones' column appears every Saturday. He can be reached at

sj@solomonjones.com.