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Contracting love through plushies

Giantmicrobes are a contagious obsession.

Published April 29, 2010

It started off innocently enough, with a trip to the old bookstore, back when Brady was still around. A trip with a friend to buy a pair of socks and mail a package on the way to food that led to a viral obsession.

It was the day I passed by the ironically cheerful display of Giantmicrobes. My roommate and I stopped to examine the findings while our friend looked through novelty love coupon books for her boyfriend. We called her over, and the three of us laughed at the utter absurdity of disease-related plushies. Still, I went home with one when I noticed the black dust ball with lumped edges and red eyes that is AIDS. (I ultimately picked it because black is my favorite color.)

That night, my roommate ended up on Overheard at Mizzou for telling her friend, "My roommate has AIDS" a bit loudly on the phone.

Before I knew it, I'd developed a Pokémon-esque "Gotta catch 'em all" mentality. I found, for a financially challenged college student, the $7.95 viral cells magnified to 1 million times their actual size make an excellent reward.

The website, which has significantly grown since that first purchase, even provided a method for my madness. All the microbes are arranged into categories. I've made it my personal mission to collect all the professional and venereal Giants before moving on to less sleazy choices, such as the exotic Swine Flu or the cape-laden MRSA.

Giantmicrobes were a huge part of freshman year, brightly lining my shelves with their fuzzy polyester shells. They also cheered me up after a tragedy as remedies from my roomie. It's amazing how something so little can show how much someone cares.

Friends would be less than surprised to receive a miniature microbe from the Petri Dish model for Christmas, but I'm still not sure how much the sun-shaped Herpes would light up their day.

My obsession might not be catching, but it certainly hasn't stopped me from mildly infecting a few friends with my love of the creatures that range from purple bookworms to stingray brain cells. My love of the cuddly cells even flowed into my academic plans when I temporarily set my sights on taking infectious diseases as my lab science credit. It wasn't a well thought out plan.

Recently, I wandered into the bookstore and picked up Hepatitis. It's not the type of sentence you want to recite to parents when they ask about your life, but it is a consequence of my fondness for unusual stuffed, ummm, organisms.

Sometimes I look at my collection of irregular and suspicious cells, and I wonder how it can be that replications of diseases that could kill me, if I actually contracted them, can have such a merrymaking effect. I wouldn't be upset at getting a 17-inch plush Kissing Disease doll, but if I were bedridden with mono, I'd be heated even after my fever broke.

Regardless, I maintain I have to cultivate my collection until my room looks like a GMO lab. In fact, I've done pretty well this semester. I think I'll head over to the bookstore and pick up HPV. Don't worry — I've had my shots.