Flipper is ... not sick and not well. The fine line dividing the two -and consequently, when to send or not send to school - is much blurrier than I ever thought it would be back in those carefree, BC (before child) times. I thought it would be easy: You are so sick that you should, indeed you MUST stay home from school, and you are completely well and therefore leaping out of bed, ready to race off to the halls of higher learning. How did things get so confused??

Even the parameters of what I thought defined "sick" and "well" seem so, so NEBULOUS. What if there is a fever one day but not the following morning? What if you have a puker...but one that became a puker after a revolting amount of State Fair junk food? Actually, I think that ANYONE that eats a deep-fried Twinkie deserves to throw up!

What if they are just plain tired? Is it better to have them buck up and head to school, or actually get some good rest? I am not the only mother who has given her under-the-weather child some Motrin and shunted her off to school. So far, this hasn't backfired on me, meaning that she had not gotten progressively sicker and required a pick-up, and the other parents remained oblivious, thereby letting me escape with my life. The emphasis there is on the words "so far."

This is hard when you work, and when you need to be at your job, and hold your breath (as I am doing today) thinking Only today and tomorrow...then you can be sick all weekend if you need to be! And, were she REALLY sick, she would be at home, alternately whining and sleeping and begging for Popsicles.

When I was in elementary school, we had a full-blown school infirmary with a desk and a bed or two, where the sick one could lie quietly until a parent was tracked down and came to bear them away. In the age of cell phones and instant availability, I think the whole "school nurse" thing has fallen by the wayside. I can't decide if that is good or bad. If I were sick, the only place I would ever want to be was home with my mother, and yet surely many kids grew up staying at school for some time until a parent was reached. Were people more or less forgiving then about sending borderline sick kids to school? Was it easier when more mothers stayed at home? Or does having a sick child always, always just plain suck?

Leigh appears every Tuesday on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Leigh at Flipper and Me.