There are some things that I never got around to doing in my youth, like smoking, or learning to drive, or acting like I like hip-hop or pretending to be dumb so that boys would like me. One other thing I didn’t bother doing was to contract chicken pox. I thought I had come out okay but now, at the age of 22, I have the pox – it’s true! Is this a birthday gift from some admirer? Was it a pox placed upon me as a curse? And so here I sit, splotchy and contagious to babies and others who haven’t yet had the pleasure of the pox. I have a somewhat reverse version of vanity as I stare at the welts that now cover me, ‘is it possible that I could get even more ugly?’

Sigh.

It’s so sunny outside and I am sitting inside with the pox. As I’ve become somewhat obsessed with what ails me, much like Wednesday Addams searching through Uncle Fester’s Compendium of Plagues, Scabs and Diseases, I thought I would give you a brief history…

A Brief History of the “Chicken” Pox…

A Persian physician, Muhammad ibn Zakariya ar-Razi was the first to identify this strain of the pox in the early 900s, separating it from smallpox and measles. In the 1600s, English physician Richard Morton described it as a mild form of smallpox. In 1767, a physician named William Heberden was the first to prove that chickenpox was in fact quite different from smallpox.

The pox is actually a strain of herpes and I am on the same meds one receives for genital herpes. I frowned as saintly Dr. D informed me of this but then to comfort me added, ‘Herpes is a great and storied family, only a few of it’s strains involve sordidity.’ We love Dr. D.

There is much disagreement over the origin of its name but we prefer Samuel Johnson’s. He said that the disease was “less dangerous – a “chicken” version of the pox., hence “chickenpox” I have the pox but the wimpy version – still painful and definitely no fun.

…and Being Blessed by Ricky Jay

I am now five days in my pox (gotten, apparently, “by the inhalation of airborne respiratory droplets from an infected host”) and not as dangerous to be around. So to celebrate, my sisters and I went to see Ricky Jay who performed here in Toronto for three nights at the lovely Bathurst Street Theatre.

Ricky Jay, and you should know this, is one of the top sleight-of-hand magicians working today, known for his prodigious prestidigitational feats as well as card throwing, memory feats, and witty stage banter. He is also an actor, and writer. He set the world record for throwing a playing card 190 ft at 90 miles per hour. (the record is now held by Ricky Smith Jr.) Mr. Jay created a consulting firm, Deceptive Practices, which provides “arcane knowledge on a need-to-know basis” to film and theatrical companies.

And the show? It was lovely and slight. Mr. Jay had on screen 108 images from his collection (he is a renowned collector of arcane ephemera) and in various clever ways had members of the audience pick numbers that corresponded to an image that inspired a story or a related amazing trick, or both.

However, what was truly magical was for his encore he did a new card trick. Upon its completion he casually flicked the card at the audience, randomly, in the dark. Somehow that card got all the way up into the balcony where we were sitting, somehow landing lightly in my lap way up in the second last row! It was the ace of diamonds, a totally good news and good fortune card. Maybe it wasn’t a random throw, maybe Mr. Jay was sending word. It made me feel so honoured and weird. I felt Ricky Jay had blessed the House of Pomegranates. I felt that the future would be inspired. and completely and utterly magical.

Fie on this pox! I will rise above it. Thank you Mr. Jay.