Your Child, The Common Cold, and Your Friendly Neighborhood Tutor

We all know that children are susceptible to all manner of nasty little viruses (virii?) and bacteria. We all know that children, not fully aware of how icky it is to forget to wash their little hands after using the facilities, or to wipe their runny little noses on the backs of their cartoon-character-festooned shirt sleeves, or to cough in the faces of those they hold dear, are prone to catching lots of curable, but highly annoying diseases. If I had a child, I would probably be more tolerant of my child's inability to understand Universal Precautions. But I do not have a child. I have cats and they do not sneeze, cough, puke, bleed, piss, or crap on me. Your children do.
I have had nearly every bodily fluid sprayed on me during the course of my job, and it's disgusting. For the most part, these children do horrible things to me because their parents are not cognizant of my status as a human being. I am, according to these people, a machine which does not succumb to illness. Unfortunately for all of us, I am not a Stepford Tutor and I have a very weak immune system. All this means that if your little plague rat enters my facility with even the barest whisper of a cough, I get bronchitis. If your child has an upset tummy, I get the kind of intestinal infection that makes one pray for the sweet kiss of death.
My facility has a very liberal policy regarding illness. If the child is sick, keep it at home and we will happily schedule a make-up hour for it when it is no longer a possible Patient Zero for a tutoring facility epidemic. Since we do have such a nice, easy, liberal policy regarding sickness, I cannot imagine why a parent would send their ill child to be tutored. Do they think that precious will learn anything while hacking, coughing, sneezing, or barfing? Do they think anything will be retained? Or possibly, should we let little precious stay home, drink some ginger ale, and watch Spongebob reruns?
I bring all of this up because today I am running a fever and coughing my lungs out thanks to a plague rat child. It's not the child's fault, of course, because the child did not choose to be sick nor did the child choose to come to see me. I blame the parent. I blame the inconsiderate parent who didn't want to upset his/her routine. So now, the child is still sick, and still being sent to before-school care, school, after-school care, and then finally to me. Apparently the child is less important that mommy and daddy's day planner.