A child doing his own research is great, until dad gets replaced as his go-to source

‘I have questions,’ my son says, as I pick him up from school. He’s just been on the receiving end of a light scolding from me, because of an email I got from his school. ‘This is to let you know,’ they wrote, ‘that although you have consented for your child to receive the flu nasal spray vaccination, they did not receive it.’

For a few seconds, I entertained the idea that they’d simply run out of vaccines. Or maybe he had been in the bathroom while they were being doled out. I pictured, briefly, these doses being administered by a team of nurses who had another, more pressing, engagement scheduled three minutes later, and thus jabbed the nostrils of everyone in the class in 90 seconds, with the buzzing alacrity of a Formula One pit crew.