Remember when your mother told you not to put anything in your ear or nose? Did you listen to her? Probably. I don’t know how she knew it but she’s right.

Where am I going with this you ask? Well, Mother’s Day for one, and Covid tests for the other.

I decided to go get tested, out of caution, since I had been working around more people than I had normally done for quite a while, and even though I took all practical precautions, and had my first vaccination shot 3 weeks ago, I had a few symptoms—runny nose, sore throat, slight cough. Could be a cold or reactions to all the spring dust/pollen, but the case counts and test positivity rates have been rapidly rising over the last few weeks,  and most cases were variants.

So, I drove up to the testing site and proceeded to have a swab shoved up my nose and jiggled around “For only ten seconds,” she said, although I distinctly remember her starting the count several seconds after the aforementioned insertion. Now I feel worse than when I came in…

So, Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers and of course my own. I will never doubt you again, or stick an knife in the toaster. Love you.

-Leon

Leon Stevens is a blogger, composer, artist, and an author of four books (so far): Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures, Journeys: Eight Original Pieces for Classical Guitar, The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories, and The View from Here, his first science fiction novella.