As parents, we always felt that it was grossly unfair when our kids gave us whatever plague they were suffering from. Not only did we get a grownup-sized case of said plague, we still had to take care of our feverish and miserable children while feeling like, well, crap. It was the operant definition of running on empty. Who takes care of us?

Now, it seems, our misery is shared. Not only are children being felled by the flu at school after school in central Maine, the teachers and school staff are being likewise afflicted.

"This week we're going through substitutes like crazy," Fayette Central School Superintendent and Principal Briane Coulthard told our reporter. No doubt.

But to whom do you turn when the substitutes get sick?

Spring can't come too soon, when the worst of it should be a nasty case of hay fever.