People of the Polka-dotted Persuasion

Measles, measles everywhere, and not a spot to be seen...

It is to the eternal regret of my mother that I was never fortunate enough to contract measles or chicken pox as a child. Try as she might to 'socialise' me with the neighbourhood kids (each of whom were scratching, blotchy messes), her little boy's immune system was ever-so strong, and curiously insusceptible to the contagious trials and tribulations of other little boys and girls.

With my now advanced age, my immune system (my defense against the mercurial temperament of mother nature and her occasional tantrums direct at my person) has taken a battering of late through a combination of self-induced insomnia and sustained, yet moderated, self-abuse of the alcoholic variety.

And so it is that I, with my less-than-perfect immune system, find myself in a city that is now in the midst of an outbreak of measles on many of the campuses of its many universities... while some might call this a curious coincidence, I'm inclined to attribute it to the continued collusion of the malevolent fates conspiring against me... Supporting my theory of a damnable and malicious cosmic force, I am further aided by the evidence that whilst other universities have shutdown, mine has done little more than send out a half-hearted email to students (of which I was apparently not on the mailing list, and had to have it forwarded to me by a friend) urging those inflicted with polka-dots to stay at home... the rest of us, I assume, can be damned...