Chapter 5 Whose Angina?

In that house I became very sick. We were "playing toys." We had a big cardboard box that held all the toys we 3 kids owned, many of them hand-me-downs, but the box held all our childhood imaginary play. We looked forward to playing with the contents, except for the Erector Set parts that Tommy had given to Joe. I think Tommy had worked on a garbage truck for a time, and since he then did not have a son, donated his find to Joseph. I hated those mismatched metal parts. I didn't think they belonged with our mostly animal or farm-related collection of toys. We had 2 ways of playing with our farm animal and dog collections. One was "for real" and the other was "make on." Joe, the oldest, was always the decider and that was fine with us. except this one day, I had built a fence around my animals, and Joe changed the rules and started the imaginary where fences didn't matter. Uncharacteristically, I rebelled and left the room and went into the kitchen, crying and upset. Our parents were bringing firewood in from a tree my father had cut down. They were busy and working hard and my mother didn't have time to hear my side of the story, which made me even sadder. I remember throwing up into the woodbox behind the stove. That got my mother's undivided attention. I got really sick and Dr. Sproat had to come to the house many times. Eventually he diagnosed me with a disease called Vincent's Angina. I wouldn't eat and told my mother I wanted to die. She used to send Dorothy and Joseph in to my sick bed and have them tell me that what they were eating was delicious, but I didn't care. I was sick for a long time but eventually got better. In later years I looked that disease up and found it was another name for Trench Mouth, a disease primarily of soldiers in the trenches. I think Dr. Sproat must have guessed wrong; certainly there were no tests of any kind. When I was little though, I did used to like to chew on marbles or little smooth stones, so I guess I could have put some nasty germs into my mouth. It's a wonder I lived as long as I have. P.S. I just read my own post and Epiphany! I could have gotten those germs from that old erector set that Tommy pulled out of somebody's garbage....