it’s no fun being sick. i mean, i am sure there are those hypochroniacal types that get their life’s meaning from an assumed appearance of consumption or malaise, and i remember those girls from high school that would feign sickness around lunchtime only to return the next late spring morning with a fresh tan. i always wondered why the guidance counselors, the ersatz truant officers, never went on a quick patrol of the sun-baked front yards near our school. or maybe they did, and seeing the blissful girls laid out with their radio’s blaring local KZ-106fm, they just drove on by, missing their own young afternoons. but to return, it is no fun being sick. especially after you have left high school, left college.
and this is the second time that something has hit me in the middle of a performance run. colds always have the worst timing, and the last time one struck me during a theatrical effort was in college. 1993. and i was the lead, playing jack in ‘the importance of being earnest’ at berry. a fun role, one that i could vamp and stride in, and for once we had phenomenal costumes. the black mourning outfit i wanted to steal. great velvet top hat with a long scarf hanging down the back, magnificient black frock coat. and here i was, second and last week of the production, my voice reduced to a vampiric growl and my face pale from fever. the backstage crew would mock me on headset, saying i looked green and sounded like count chocula. i didn’t even go to class that week, just so i could get up enough energy to make it to the theatre.
but these days, you have to go to work, you have to leave the comfort of your inherited couch and just get up and go. you can make up lost classes, but employers are less forgiving of lost time. and it is expensive, because you have to go into every cold forgetting mostly what worked the last time you were ill. and even if you do remember the orange juice, the chicken soup, the echinacea, the dayquil, there is always a new and improved product that promises to take your nasal blues away. so you buy that as well. we are suckers that way. and i am one of those who holds this paranoid belief that there actually is a cure for the common cold out there, but its locked away in a mutual trust owned by the pharmaceutical companies. how many businesses would crumble if the cold could be eliminated with one simple pill? so far i have purchased robitussin, dayquil, tylenol cold, theraflu, hall’s defence drops, ricola’s zinc’alyptus, breathe right strips and kroger brand nyquil.
and it makes you do things, fires your sense of the immediate. if one thing isn’t working, you must find another that does, and soon. like the way it inspired me to drive to kroger at 3:30am in search of afrin or somethinganything to clear up my head so i could sleep for pete’s sake. so i go, narrowly avoiding becoming a paint spot on the street due to a weaving big rig, and the patrons with me were almost worth the trip. strange single men shopping like they missed their ex-wives. pretty pierced girls with shocking red hair shopping in pairs, coming from clubs or nightly occupations. hard to tell. determined stock boys sitting on boxes of canned vegetables, lining up the peas side by side in even rows. a girl and a boy mopping at the entrance, keeping an interesting rhythm while speaking nonstop in spanish. for those images, i can be grateful.
but i am feeling better. perhaps i shouldn’t complain. perhaps i should just be grateful for the brakes i had to apply while recovering. singer david wilcox has this brief bit about the meaning of a head cold. ‘you’ve been pulled over by the reaper and let off with a warning.’ slow down. look around. take a bit more time.
and i can breathe again.
