I Swear I have Bird Flu -- But No Family Chicken

Alright . . . I have a little sore throat and a bit of a hacking cough. And I have no chickens at my house because of that whole "family chicken" thing ***, so I couldn't have bird flu. Those children I work with are germy though . . . little infection factories.

*** My grandmother (the nice one) was in charge of the chicken coop when she was a child. Having not actually experienced a chicken coop myself, I have to take her for her word that chickens are incredibly "dirty birds". Because "dirtiness" was somehow worse in restaurants (?) because you could not control the preparation of the "dirty bird" we never ate chicken out and seldom ate it at home. When it was cooked at home, it was cooked WELL as if you could cook all the dirtiness out of the chicken if you took your time. During the Kentucky Fried Chicken craze of the mid-seventies, my grandmother was known to (if we whined and made her buy the dirtiness) put the bucket in her oven for an hour or so . . . because you just don't know how well it was cooked at that place. I didn't know that there was poultry that wasn't the consistency of sawdust until I was twenty years old. And even then, I was leery . . . they might have just not cooked it enough.

So now, just to confuse people, my family says things like: "But I couldn't eat it . . . it wasn't family chicken." As if my family ever eats chicken . . .

I was bitten by a turkey once. But that's a story for another day. And no, he wasn't a family turkey, neither.