Amanda-Leigh and the Alligator Plague

I suffered from the one and only Alligator Plague at an early age. That Alligator Plague was one of the most miserable life events I can ever recall. This along with getting my hand swept into a cow’s mouth. The cow’s mouth did not poke holes in my skin the way of the Alligator Plague. Almost every child gets the Alligator Plague.

The Alligator Plague began with me scratching all over! I could not stop scratching. The more I scratched, the more the Alligator Plague showed. Red spots marked my skin from head to toe. I was kept under a cover away from everybody. The Alligator Plague had struck hard! For days, I scratched. For days, I was told not to scratch. When a little girl has to scratch her Alligator bites, no one can be there to tie her hands down night and day. I scratched those bites as if they had become a daily ritual. Scratching more felt good!

The Alligator Plague was at its peak. The Alligator bites had taken over my body. No need for Calamine or anti-itching medication at this point. I also do not believe any home remedy could have cured the Alligator Plague at this point. My tiny, vulnerable body was a statistic to the Alligator Plague. One in a million children suffered from the Alligator Plague world-wide. The Alligator Plague had struck.

The itching continued. The scratching did not ease up. I was a bad child. I did not know how to get rid of these Alligator bites. This remedy was not simple as pouring sweet pickle juice over my face to cure freckles in the summertime. I could not poach the Alligator bites on a hot stove to de-sensitize the itch. I could not swim across an ocean to lose the Alligator bites at sea. Would this have been fair to the aquatic animals? I could not pour baking soda on the Alligator bites. I simply could not get rid of this annoying itching business!

As the days passed, the Alligator Plague got to the point that I did not want to be itching anymore. Imagine turning five with having  Alligator bites all over! Classmates would have understood. Adults would not have. The Alligator Plague is only for children! Adults have learned the remedy of the Alligator Plague. Their wisdom skips children. Children can itch, scratch, itch, and scratch until the Alligator bites appear. Children wait anxiously for the Alligator bites to disappear.

 As an adult, I do not hear about the Alligator Plague much. Since I am not around children much, I am not aware if this still happens. i do not post this plague to my timeline on Facebook. I do not tell many people about getting the Alligator Plague. The Alligator Plague hit me hard as a child. I had Alligator marks all over my body that can still be thoughtful shameful in modernism. Without falling victim to the Alligator Plague, I would not be writing this today. The Alligator Plague and I sure did have our daily battles the way Edmund Burke and Mary Wollstonecraft fought over the education of women and Ezra Pound fought over Imagism with Amy Lowell in 1835. The Alligator Plague seemed to win at times. The itching was a vile and toxic part of my young existence in a world that was not shaped for the Alligator Plague. The little girl did not fall for the itching after days of peaceful harmony the way Alfred Lord Tennyson changed his literary expression style to suit the harsh literary critic, John Stuart Mills.

Before, in between, and after the Alligator Plague, I thought and behaved like a child. The Alligator Plague did not rob me of my innocence. The Alligator Plague did not land me in the hospital. The Alligator Plague tempted me into the childhood sin of scratching uncontrollably. The Alligator’s jaws became shut as the days passed. The Alligator no longer struck hard or at all.  This liberated me as a small child. I no longer felt empowered by something I could not control about my body.

Why am I sharing my experience of the Alligator Plague? I believe the Alligator needs to be set free back into the wild. After thirty three years of hiding the Alligator Plague, parents can be aware of my experience. Every Alligator belongs in his or her natural habitat. When an Alligator is taken out of the wild, its teeth will strike. The Alligator is confused, upset, and does not know how to behave well in society. This makes an Alligator bite the innocent, sweet skin of small children. Children do not know how to run from the Alligator Plague. The only way a child knows how to survive the Alligator bite is to scratch after itching. Until Alligators are able to remain in their natural habitats, children will continue to suffer from the Alligator Plague.