In grade school I was sent home with the chicken pox.

“But I didn’t eat any chicken,” I told Momma in between slobber cries.

When our neighbors, T-Anne and Dr. Garst, heard about my chicken pox they sent over their two children, and then I wasn’t the only one to itch.

The Garsts were going to be Methodist missionaries in a few months and wanted their children to get as many childhood diseases out of the way before they left.

Many years later when my son got the mumps (on both sides, upper and lower) I worried I’d get them, but didn’t.

I did get Bell’s palsy in my late twenties. It gave me a crooked smile and for several few months I looked as if I’d had a stroke.Momma blamed the palsy on me getting my ears pierced a year earlier.

Only street walkers got their ears pierced in her day, she said.

I bring up the piercing because nowadays those tiny holes in my ears have turned into droopy and wide openings.

When I mentioned it to my favorite daughter-from-another-mother I was told, “You’re the only one who notices it.”

She said the same thing when I pointed out a bulge on the right side of my neck.

Then last week when friend Miss Sweetness and Light and I were in Stillwater I checked out my haircut up close in the hand mirror.

“What is this lump on my neck?” I asked as I jiggled it from one side to the other.

“It’s a turkey neck,” my friend and our hairdresser chimed.

They agreed it was due to weight loss after unwanted surgeries.

“Wear turtlenecks,”

said one.

The other suggested exercise and creams.

I wanted to whine that I hadn’t eaten turkey since Thanksgiving. Instead I put on my sweater, and pulled the hood around my gobbler neck.

When I got home I Googled turkey necks. Seems I’m not alone.

My eyes glazed over when I saw high-dollar creams and glances at neck exercises made me tired. So I did what any old person would do: I took a nap.