Temping

Photo by Jessica Lewis 🦋 thepaintedsquare on Unsplash.

I didn’t want to go to school. Fifth grade sucked — especially since my best friend mysteriously started ghosting me.

I told my mom, who was busy preparing to go to work at the library, “I don’t feel well.” She held the back of her hand against my forehead.

“Hmm, you do feel a bit warm,” she said.

She got the thermometer from the bathroom and stuck it in my mouth, before returning to her morning doings.

After a minute or so, I checked the thermometer: Alas, my temperature was normal!

So in a fit of inspiration, I placed the thermometer’s metal tip against the lightbulb of my bedside lamp. I watched the mercury climb to 102.7 — at which point I put the thermometer back in my mouth. Just in time! Mom bustled into my room and took the thermometer back out of my mouth. She squinted at the mercury.

“Well, you do have a fever!” she said. “You’d better stay home today.”

I couldn’t believe my good fortune! A simple trick, and now I didn’t have to go to my dreary school. After she took off for work, I excitedly got out the snack tray, pulled down an assortment of breakfast cereals off the shelf, got milk, bowl, spoon. I turned on the TV so I could watch the cartoons. I was in heaven!

I did feel mildly guilty at fooling my mom and the system, but that was a feeling I apparently could live with.

The next day, I did the same thing. And the day after that. The weeks went by.

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Eventually, Mom took me to Dr. Katzev, our family doctor. He put a thermometer in my mouth, and we all waited: me, Mom, and Dr. Katzev. Without my usual recourse to a nearby lightbulb, I furiously concentrated on somehow raising my own temperature, just through force of will.

The doctor took out the thermometer and read it.

“Hmm, 99.8. Slightly high.”

I felt such a sense of accomplishment! Mind over mercury.

Dr. Katzev consulted some medical tomes. Finally he said, “I think what Joshy has is Asymptomatic High-Fever Syndrome.”

Mom nodded.

“Best keep him home a while longer,” the doctor said.

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One morning my mom took my temperature while I was in the bathroom, so I couldn’t do my lightbulb trick. She left me there with the thermometer in my mouth. I looked around, trying to figure out what to do.

Finally I turned on the hot water in the bathroom sink and ran it over the thermometer tip. In this manner, I was able to achieve a temperature of 101 or so.

“Hm, higher than usual!” Mom noted. She went to the kitchen to phone my school and tell them I’d be out sick again.

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One time, as I was in bed having my temperature taken, I got sloppy: I left the thermometer on the lightbulb for too long. Mom came in to check my temperature.

“106!” she exclaimed. She felt my forehead with the back of her hand.

“You don’t feel that warm,” she said. “This thermometer must be broken.”

She threw it out and bought a new one.

A rectal thermometer!

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It’s not a dignified thing to have one’s temperature taken rectally. Plus there’s the coldness of the goo that gets put on the tip, to facilitate insertion between the butt cheeks. All in all, an unpleasant experience.

I lay there on my tummy, the rectal thermometer protruding from my butt.

What to do now?

In the end, I did what I had to do: reached back behind me, pulled the thermometer from my butt, held it up to the lightbulb until the temp got sufficiently high, then managed (with some difficulty) to re-insert it before Mom came back to check.

It worked!

There was, to be sure, a certain amount of discomfort in this experience, a certain lack of savoir-faire. But the result was that I continued to be able to stay home from school. I got to eat breakfast cereals to my heart’s content and watched loads of television.

This went on for months and months. Sometimes I had to rush the thermometer into the kitchen so I could put it in the freezer and bring my temp back to a believable level.

I ended up missing most of fifth grade. I never got to take Mrs. McGill’s geography class, which is why to this day I suck at geography.

I basically spent those weekdays being happy. Free!

But the guilt started building up. I was being deceitful to my mom, to my school. I was faking an illness. I was a Bad Person.

One morning, when Mom came into my bedroom with the thermometer, I burst into tears. “I’ve been faking it!” I confessed.

I told her how I’d been doing it. I expected her to be furious at the long deception. But she said, “Wow, you really didn’t want to go to school!”

I could hardly believe she was receiving my confession with such understanding! Empathy wasn’t usually her strong suit.

She stood there, considering the situation.

“I mean, you took matters into your own hands!” I could see in her eyes something I’d never seen there before. In a sneaky, creative way, her son had stuck it to The Man.

I had to go back to school for the remaining weeks of fifth grade, but it wasn’t so bad. It was okay that most of my classmates had a clearer idea than I did of where Idaho was. Now there was something no one could take away from me: I’d finally figured out how to make my mother proud!