I am just getting over being sick. I have been sick, to varying degrees, for the past few months. I get better, I get worse, I get better, I regurgitate my lungs. I can understand why I have been sick for so long; the common cold is a formidable enemy for me, considering I have one lonely white blood cell working double shifts from now till I’m 70. At which point he will retire to Florida, leaving me susceptible to everything ranging from fevers to crabgrass. Mostly crabgrass.
My favorite part about this recurrent ailment of mine is that it happens out of season. Normally, the flu blows into town, sets up shop in a local Motel 6 and starts pushing itself in the highly populated areas–the high school lunchroom, the neighborhood swing set, the salad bar at your local Quick Check. For me, the flu coincides with the onset of the hurricane season, which, thanks to modern medicine, has been linked to the El Niño gene, a virulent little bugger that causes torrential rains and changing tides throughout my thoracic cavity.
Perhaps you have had one of these colds recently. The initial symptom is 80% of the water in your body turning into phlegm. However, if this is your only symptom it is possible that you are turning into a frog. The tell tale sign is waking to find a family of weasels living in your lungs, such that every wheezing breath is coupled with the high-pitched whine of the little varmints.
Now, it is one thing to have an infestation in your throat. But when these buggers move into your chest, it’s time to go see someone with letters behind their name. Sitting in the examining room, waiting for the doctor, I was slightly put off by the fact that everything in the room was labeled VIAGRA, right down to the cue-tip receptacle. However, my nervousness was assuaged after I told the physician of my problems, and she decided that the best course of action would be to bombard my chest with massive amounts of radiation; to make sure that there is nothing sinister living in there. And that nothing will ever live in there again.
Well, after the barrage of tests and charts completed at my expense, my crack medical team, taking time off from their federal prison terms for pilfering orange traffic cones, came to this shocking conclusion: I was sick. Then, through the use of a stethoscope and a deck of cards, they also told me that I was in fact Harris Brodsky, and there was a good chance that I would be Harris Brodsky for some time to come, provided I take a daily regimen of Pfizer products, which would necessitate getting another job to pay for these new supplements.
Then, a light at the end of the tunnel: I thought I was all better two weeks ago, so I did what any young man emerging from a sickness would do–I went running. I started down the street happy and healthy. Little did I know that my body was playing a trick on me, having tied up and gagged my one white blood cell so that he couldn’t warn me of the danger. Thirty feet down the road, as I lie on the ground gasping for air and trying to wrestle an asthma inhaler away from a young boy on a scooter, I realized my body had duped me.
Well, time and drugs have worked their magic and I am back at peak efficiency. I used all my money on doctors and their medications, so I now live off small hotel bottles of shampoo and conditioner. Not very good, but filling. I have to go now, and if you know any good white blood cells, tell them I’m hiring.