This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
To celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, my wife and I got matching flu vaccinations.
Truthfully, we went abroad for our anniversary. But we hadn't planned anything special on the actual day itself. We were back home, grocery shopping, and saw a sign advertising flu shots. We just decided, "What the hell? A 40th anything only comes around once."
Things got a little crazy. We splurged and also got matching shingles shots. Then we went home and did a few chores. That evening, we went to dinner and later had to self-medicate for heartburn.
I'm old enough now to have been inoculated against every disease since the Black Death. I'm immunized against polio, pertussis, anthrax, rotavirus, typhoid, diphtheria, influenza, measles, tuberculosis, rubella, smallpox, yellow fever, rabies, meningococcal and more.
Tetanus goes without saying. I've been getting those regularly since the first time I came home bleeding from a ricochet bullet fragment and my new wife freaked out.
Me: "It's no big deal. See? I already dug it out."
Her: "Get in the car."
On the other hand, rabies was a big deal. That $@#& hurt worse than the raccoon bites. For the record, never get between a raccoon and the bag of jerky he just pulled out of your kayak if you don't have the wherewithal to immediately shoot him, cut off his head, and take it to a lab.
That isn't the worst vaccine I ever got. My least favorite was one I received while processing into the military.
The guy in line ahead of me flinched as the vaccine was fired into him with a pneumatic gun. It caused a bloody tear in his arm that resulted in him fainting and me asking the medic why we didn't just wait for the Viet Cong to shoot me?
Did you know there's a vaccine for something called "smart-assery"? Yeah. There is. It's 20 pushups repeated every 15 minutes as required by a maniacal Puerto Rican drill sergeant with excellent hearing and no sense of humor.
Anyway, I've given up avoiding needles. As I get older, I seem to need more of them. My doctor — whom I will identify here only as. Gregory Daynes, Rose Canyon Clinic, Riverton, Utah, will tell me.
Him: "Let's see … hmm, you need vaccinations for pneumonia and, your wife says, something called Irresponsibilitis. Roll up your sleeve."
Me: "Whoa. When did they start making needles out of PVC pipe?"
Another reason I've surrendered to vaccinations is because scientists and medical researchers never cease in their search for something new to stab me with.
Never mind future plagues and stuff; I'm waiting for vaccines that actually do the public some recognizable good other than keeping us from dying right now.
I think there should be a vaccine against stupidity, which would protect people from things like aggressive driving and texting while driving. Let's call it the "Headupbuttus" vaccination.
Oh, and another vaccine we need is "Rant-bies," which would effectively prevent boring talks in church, prolonged political rants and lectures by people who think they're smarter than they really are.
When I showed this to my wife, she grew serious and said, "You'd better hope they never come up with either of those vaccines. You'll be out of a job."
Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.