So So So Sick
I’ll try to spare y’all most of the gory details, but a perfect storm of a nasty cold and food poisoning courtesy some manky General Tso’s Chicken has me feeling sicker than I have for nearly 10 years. Doc says I’ll get better, that this just has to run its course. I suppose.
Reminds me though of another time I was deathly ill. I was in college and had come down with an awful cold. Usually with colds, I’m pretty solid. Lots of coughing and whatnot, but I’m good with living with that and dosing myself to high heaven with vitamin C and doubling my sleep time.
This particular cold, though, was one that laughed at such pedestrian means. I was waiting tables and going to class, and on this Worst Day Ever (college edition) I’d had to go to two classes in the morning, then go and work 6 hours at the restaurant. By the time it was the end of my shift, my voice was gone, I could barely breath through nose or mouth, and I was coming down with a heavy fever–alternating chills and sweatiness.
I will now mention at this point that the girl I went out with in college had recently broken up with me (I was deservedly dumped by this person a half-dozen times it seems like during our dating life. That we both seem to have turned out ok is a testament to the fact that she was right and I had some stuff to figure out.) I was miserable because of this. I was miserable because I was sick. The whole sickness/being dumped thing felt like a sort of divine retribution for all the crappy things I’ve done in my life.
I got home and put the TV on. The local FOX affiliate showed “Simpsons” reruns, and I thought “What I need to take my mind off the fact that I wouldn’t mind being dead right now is some good Simpsony laffs!” I grabbed a blanket, assumed a shivering fetal position on my couch, and managed a weak smile for the Simpsons intro.
And here is where the cosmos completely crushed my little world. The episode they showed that night? It was the one where Grampa Simpson falls in love with his fellow nursing home resident Bea…and then Homer makes Abe go on a camping trip and they get stuck in the woods and when Grampa gets back home he finds out that Bea has died. It’s an incredibly sad episode, if you’re predisposed to pathos it hits like a ton of bricks. Had someone been nearby with a full bottle of sedatives…ok, probably not. But suffice to say in my mangled criminally immature mind I was sure that this was all planned, all some sort of karmic slapdown, a sure sign that I wasn’t going to wake up that night.
I did, of course, and got better, and forgot all that karma stuff and basically went on being the kind of idiot that most guys in their early 20’s manage to be. But I never forgot Grampa Simpson and Bea lurking out there in TV land as a reminder that anytime life seems about as bad as it can get, there’s always something worse that can happen.
What a great Up With People kinda post this is. I’m goin’ to bed!
Popnarcotic 