A couple months back John Scalzi (my favorite, new, sci-fi author) had a blog post with a picture of his daughter and some of her new “friends”, plush toy Giant Microbes. The obviously staged, frightened look on her face while looking at the giant microbes was priceless, but John’s comment “I do sometimes wonder if 20 years from now my daughter will presenting me with very expensive therapy bills” caused something to click in my head. Knowing Rory Blyth’s germaphobia affliction, and his tales of growing up with his slightly eccentric family, I knew that Rory just had to have a set of these guys for himself, and probably would never get around to actually purchasing them for himself. So instead, being the friend that I am, I knew that the task had fallen to me.
The only question I had was which microbes I should get for Rory. Each one had its own unique implications. In the end, I picked out a couple of the normal, everyday common cold varieties (ear ache, stomach ache, strep throat, etc.). I figured it was alright for me to give Rory a common cold, but a STD was definitely out of the question.
Rory was obviously more then ecstatic when a package arrived for him at work. Sorry it wasn’t a $1,000,000 donation, or a severed head of a slashdotter, but hey, maybe next time.