rowyn

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I process most of the payments by mail made to Toddler Bank. Today, in an envelope containing a perfectly normal check and payment notice, I also received seven curious slips of paper, each about two and a half inches wide, and a third of an inch tall. Dotted lines ring each one; they look like they've been cut along the dotted lines from a photocopied piece of paper. Each as a word or phrase on it. They read as follows:

Fever
Sucks thumb
Attends a daycare center five days a week
Four years old
Diarrhea
Recently swam in a local pond
Nausea and vomiting

It's almost like they're pieces from some peculiar medical diagnostic game. I have no idea what they're supposed to mean. One of my co-workers suggested that the envelope had been storing many of these, and the customer hadn't emptied it completely before putting the payment inside and mailing it.

So: what sort of purposes (nefarious and otherwise) can you imagine for slips of paper like these?

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

mach.livejournal.com

It reads as a list of clues to a provider, possibly a test. Taken together the symptoms hint at the child having a parasite induced sickness caused from either swimming in a pond, or from e.coli poisioning.

From:

kelloggs2066.livejournal.com

It does sound like a game of some sort.

One question: Since you don't mention it, I assume that these slips of paper are printed as opposed to hand written?

If they were printed, it would be inclined to think that it is some sort of game or test.

If handwritten, then I might be inclined to suspect that it's a list of symptoms of a patient.

From:

tuftears.livejournal.com

Nefarious purpose: voodoo! You know how they used to work voodoo by leaving fetishes in the possessions of some person or around places he lived or worked? Same idea, just done by mail.

Nefarious purpose: voodoo blackmail! Next they'll be followed by a letter reading, "You could have actually been cursed by the ailments and disasters recently named! If you wish us to protect you from these things, send $1000 in small, unmarked bills to..."

From:

octantis.livejournal.com

The thin, pasty man had a blissful expression, on a face obviously unaccustomed to it. Despite being seated in an uncomfortable looking chair, and having a steel bowl affixed to his bald head, he was asleep. A crisp lab coat and black industrial rubber gloves were his pajamas.

A similarly dressed aide hovered anxiously nearby, a stunted, goblinlike figure only a little over half his boss' height. Despite having been there for several hours, he betrayed no fatigue when he sprang to a nearby console, almost the very instant his master began screaming. He threw two triggered railroad style levers and spun a wheel that looked like it belonged on Captain Nemo's Nautilus. Pipes rattled, steam hissed, and the whine of machinery that had filled the shadowy lab faded, leaving only a low even buzz that the aide had learned to ignore. A few tiny bits of paper were blown from a slot in a refridgerator-sized computer, and fluttered into a tray on a workbench.

The seated man's eyes flicked open, his face stony, 20 years having crash landed on it after its blissful look had evaporated. Only a tic around his left eye hinted that he had been howling in terror and anguish mere moments earlier. He removed the steel bowl from his head and let it fall away, left it dangling by cords and ribbed hoses as he stood and stepped off the platform. His assistant quickly fell into step, wringing his hands.

"Was... was this dream good, doctor?" asked the aide, his smile at odds with the wince of a person expecting to be struck. It was a stupid question, of course, but he felt obliged to be optimistic. A black look from the doctor served as both answer and blow, causing the little man to blanch.

The taller man simply collected the contents of the tray on the workbench, and a small, crusty pot of rubber cement, on his way to a jumble of copper machinery studded with wartlike brass rivets and glass tubing. A row of globes along the top contained misty swirls of color on the inside, and blurry smears on the outside to which neatly uniform rectangles of paper clung. The first globe read "Seven years old," "Sucks thumb," and "Fear of clowns". The next was labelled "Five years old," "Nausea and vomitting," and "Covered with spiders". The doctor passed several more of these until he arrived at a clean globe. His face somehow managed to sour even more while he splodged rubber cement on the glass, and affixed paper scraps reading, "Eight years old," "Recently swam in local pond," and "Lost trunks, laughed at by peers".

The aide couldn't bring himself to follow his boss, and cringed by the workbench. He shifted his weight uncomfortably while the doctor stared quietly at the freshly labelled globe.

"Ah... I've prepared the check for the next batch of equipment," the assistant offered, trying to scoop said check off the workbench and into an envelope, using rubber gloves that didn't quite fit right, babbling as he fumbled to separate labels and the check. "I'll send it to T-Toddler, and we can expect another shipment of globes to fill, and I'm sure one of the children will have a good dream for-.."

The doctor finally spoke. "GO!!" he bellowed, and his assistant shrieked right along with him, throwing his hands into the air and upsetting the tray of labels. The aide stuffed the check into its envelope and scurried away, leaving his master to contemplate another failure and a blizzard of paper children and nightmares gradually settling to the laboratory floor.

From:

level-head.livejournal.com

Oho! Excellent indeed.

And it matches the data perfectly, which makes it the obvious correct scenario!

===|==============/ Level Head

From:

rowyn

They're pre-printed. I guess they make a certain amount of sense as a doctor's tool -- either describing symptoms, or possible vectors. Still, I can't see a clinic handing out slips of paper and asking people to pick the ones that fit. ;)

From:

rowyn

Yah. He could've picked up the bug from either the pond or the daycare. Sucking his (or her) thumb probably increases the likelihood of transmission. It still looks more like a strange sort of game to me than anything else.

From:

rowyn

And that asteroid back in January must've hit the Earth, too. ;)

From:

rowyn

Very inventive! Good characterization you've got going there, too. :)

From:

rowyn

I did feel a little ill after receiving them, in fact ... :D

It occured to me that it'd be fun to pretend, in my journal to be acquiring these traits/experiences, starting with the simplest ('I'm feeling nauseous this morning, think I'll skip breakfast') and working my way back to the least plausible ('Waaaah! I've shrunk! I want my MOMMY!') But I thought that would be a little mean. :)