Uuuuuugh

I'm nursing a sore throat which causes me to moan this post's title every five minutes. A brownie sundae was unsuccessful in soothing the pain. I usually get mildly sick at least once a year, but almost never to an extent that I have to skip work or school. There are two recent exceptions: my senior years of both high school and college.

The second-to-last week of high school I fell extremely ill for the first time since middle school. I will spare you the details. That sickness I blamed on a tainted dice that was passed around during a Monopoly game in my AP Government class.

Senior year of college I got sick three times. The first was during the Swine Flu pandemic, when some dorms actually had their basements quarantined so that students with the Pig Virus could be sequestered there. Brave volunteers (for at least a half a credit, one can assume) were to deliver lunch and dinner to this leper colony. I wish I remembered if anyone was exiled to these rooms--not me, because I think I only caught Swine Flu Lite.

I also got sick a week or so later as I was having a conversation about how everyone was getting sick. I started coughing in the middle of my sentence and I wasn't well for a week. I think the cause was psychosomatic.

My third and final time getting sick arrived inexplicably, as always. I remember being in bed coughing from midnight until around 3am. How I got to sleep I don't know, but I emailed my professor that morning saying I would be missing Critical Literary Theory (a rare occurrence).

As bad as I felt today, I still wrote 500 words or so and I still went into work. Yet again everyone wanted The Hunger Games, which I was only asked about twice today. It was a slow day.

Illustration by Ollie Crafoord