Dear Amritsar,
It's not fair!
Junie Buggles came to geography class with a purple rash on her face in the shape of Russia (including Crimea - she was always so precious!). When Misses Wigg-Owte told her she should go home until she was better, Junie said that she was fine and the rash was just a birthday present from her parents. Looking aghast - looking several ghasts, actually, lots and lots of ghasts - Misses Wigg-Owte asked her to explain.
Wearing that smug expression that just makes you want to trip her and make her fall into poo (and, I ain't talking no adorable anthropomorphic bears, here, either), Junie explained that her parents had bought a 30,000 year-old virus that had been frozen in the Siberian permafrost and had been discovered when the ice melted because of, you know, global warming and stuff and, anyway, they injected her with it for her birthday because they loved her and wanted to make her special day even more special by giving her an illness that nobody else in the world had, that nobody else in the world could have had for tens of thousands of years and, really, it didn't hurt unless she thought of England, which she did all the time now that it was pointed out to her, but, other than that, she was fine to learn all about the coastline of Swaziland or whatever Misses Wigg-Owte planned on teaching, I mean, it's not like it was contagious, because then she wouldn't be special any more, and, and, and -
I wanted to barf.
I want it.
I have a birthday coming up, and I told my mother I want a 30,000 year-old virus, but she refused to get it for me. She said it was impossible for her to get her hands on one - something about having clearance to work in a government research facility with access to dangerous substances and blah blah blah! But, would it kill her to go to the Arctic to look for a virus in the melting ice herself! Really, what kind of a mother would deny her only child such a simple thing? And, on her birthday, no less!
My mother obviously hates me.
What would you suggest I do to get back at her?
Poppy Bagnold
Hey, Babe,
Viruses are not fashion accessories. Have your parents taught you nothing?
Microbiologists believe that frozen viruses are so 30,000 years ago - the human genome has moved on to relationships with newer, younger viruses - so they are not likely to be a threat to human existence. That doesn't mean that injecting yourself with a gift from your parents can't have an adverse affect on your body. Millennia-old viruses can cause: the upper half of your lower intestine to atrophy and fall off; the cones of your eyes to stop recognizing the colour yellow (except in Big Bird); ingrown outboard motors; thumb migration (bad enough when they move to the outer part of your hand; worse when they go to either nostril of your nose); a desire to vote for Rob Ford, which would be especially awkward if you lived in Mexico, or; skin eruptions in the shape of a baby's arm holding an apple.
Goodness! I remember when the first child at my school - Ronald Pumpenschumpeter - got a zombie. Of course, we all wanted one. We promised our parents we would take care of it, too, but, of course, we lost interest within a week and the zombies went unfed. Those of us who survived the resulting zombocalypse learned a valuable lesson: children should not be allowed to play with threats to the future of humanity just because their parents insist upon cravenly indulging their every whim.
Okay, that may have been a sideways synopsis of the film Fido - not to mention harsh - but I'm sure you see my point. You - you don't? See my point? It's not like I hit you over the head with Hecate's Hammer of Subtleness! Goodness, are you a 12 year-old? Okay. Right. Sorry for implying - but, really, that's no excuse. Go back and read the last sentence of the previous paragraph over and over again until your eyes cross and you start seeing unicorns wearing gasmasks on the streets of 11th Century London or you see what I am saying.
Oh, and I am not unwilling to help a young lady get revenge on her mother, but you're going to have to give me a more valid reason to do so!
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service's sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: Please do not confuse the words "precious" and "precocious." If I catch even the slightest whiff of a possibility of a mistake in this matter, I will sic The Language Corrector Dude on you. Beware: his plodding nature and way with ungainly metaphors is deadly!