If you have kids, you might worry about germs. I never worry about germs, because I know germs are nasty little suckers that can take care of themselves. And I don’t worry about my kids getting germs because they are experts at it. We used to try to keep the germs away. I bought lots of hand sanitizer and we sang Row, Row, Row your boat while we washed our hands and we talked about coughing into our elbow and we wore essential oil healing crystals in our belly buttons. But after I found myself saying “Don’t lick the seat belts!” and “Our sister’s toes don’t go in our mouth!” a few many times, I realized resistance is futile. So our current plan is to get every strain of every disease known to man as quickly as possible so we can get back to our regularly scheduled lives. To do that, we have to catch a lot of germs, so here are some sure fire ways to get your tribe sniffling and fevering:

• Go to a children’s museum, public pool, or your local fast food play place. Works every time.
• Schedule a family vacation. Someone will start to vomit.
• Be alive in February.
• Teach a nursery or daycare class.
• Send your kids to school.
• Plan family pictures or a special event.
• Visit a local infectious diseases lab. Give your toddler a giant hammer. Breathe deep.

Once you’ve acquired the germs, the fun really starts. Since other people might not be on the All Germs All the Time Plan, they’ll insist you try to keep your little party contained. Schools are particularly great about this. They will undoubtedly have very lengthy school policies about keeping your child home when they have coughing, fever, sniffling, vomiting, rashes, acne, alien parasites, hormones, or shifty eyes. Then, to show you how serious they are about these policies, they will then send you letters after your sweetie pie has missed 2.7 days of school demanding to know why you don’t value their education and why you want them to fail at life. This may seem confusing to you as a first time parent, but don’t worry. The solution is to stuff your children full of tylenol, send them to school for an hour or two, and then go pick them up when they call you for the third time telling you they want to come home. They get to count their attendance, skip half of school anyway, and rub all their snot on their friends whose parents are not as enlightened as you are. Win-win-win!

If your kids are like my kids, having them home sick is a treat. Because they will probably start out the day dying, with 109.8 degree temperatures and purple spots in their throat, and then by lunch time be bouncing off the walls, practicing tumbling and begging you to go to the park or Disneyland. If you’re really lucky you’ll schedule a doctor’s appointment during the super sick phase, and their miraculous instant healing will happen in the waiting room at the office. Then the doctor can stare you down as your energetic angel is doing jumping jacks on top of the medical cabinets and silently judge you for being a worrywart, over protective parent who can’t tell the difference between influenza and Manic Pediatric Hypochondria (which is absolutely a real condition and not something I just made up).  Plus you get to give them a copay, which is money very well spent, because otherwise you would probably use it to buy bags of cereal your kids could pour down your window well, so you dodged a bullet right there. Whew.

We’re a couple years into this awesome plan to create immunity to everything, and let me tell you guys, it’s going fantastic. We’ve caught a lot of germs, done a lot of laundry, bought a lot of tissues, and spent a lot of quality time together. It’s really a family bonding activity. Plus my kids have really gotten into it, and now they regularly sleep with bowls in case they need to vomit suddenly and it’s saved us a lot of money on stuffed animals. One word of warning: it’s highly likely that if you go this route, you’ll end up getting sick every time your kids do. But that’s the best part of parenting: taking care of sick kids while you feel like dying. Because everyone deserves a little pampering.