Honesty

Can I be honest about something? I never got over flu shots.

“Hi, how are you doing today?” every pharmacist, nurse, doctor, what-have-you, rudely attempting polite conversation with me and ignoring the obvious cold sweat across my brow as they go about their job.

My day ain’t so great, now friend. That’s a long ing needle in your hands. Oh good, you’re cleaning it. If it’s gonna get jammed into a vein, at least it will look real nice as it catches the light. Life’s too short to be a fashion-don’t at the Walgreens. Yikes.

Oh sure, I’ll still get ‘em. Nobody wants to be that guy at the office. (Yeah, I’m looking at you, sickies.)

I have a pathological fear of getting out of my desk to get up and grab a tissue, and doubly so if I have to stand at the garbage can for ten minutes blowing out enough snot to sculpt a replica of my cat – if, you know, I actually had the talent to make that happen.

Sure, the lie is that only children and really petty high school students pay attention to what you’re doing all day. And there’s always someone who could type through Godzilla’s attack on Sherman.

And yet, despite routine apathy on bad haircuts, good haircuts, and the hobbies you mention over and over, someone always seems to notice or care when the sick person is huddled around a box of tissues and popping their eleventh vitamin-C drop of the hour.

“Looks like somebody caught a cold,” your desk neighbor smirks in a singsong. It is the prize of the well-immuned to mock the sufferers. And mock they do as they pointedly set a rumpled old package of tissues that’s been rotting in their desk drawer for a year and a half.

(Of course, at the Press, Kari just squirts everybody with hand sanitizer. The mass attack is how she shows love and equal treatment under the law.)

If you survive the day in public – which would undoubtedly bring worse attention this year, particularly if you catch a cold with a cough – there’s still home life to deal with.

Dog-lovers can probably rest easy here. Your loved ones roll around in worse and probably wouldn’t care if they didn’t.

But cats? Those little… furbabies thrive on judgment.

One sniff and it’s an instant whisker twitch and eyes half-widened in your direction. (Pardon my French.)

Oh sure, they’ll keep you company. But much like the gloating of the permanently-well, your feline faux-friend will lie beside you and purr. A reminder of the many sounds your larynx can no longer generate. Your meek wheezes in response will be the pomp to Felix’s triumph.

And, let’s be honest, many of us are lazy, and a little gross. Your sleeves take a real beating during a cold, especially if you think you can surreptitiously avoid getting up more (you can’t, don’t bother).

It’s awful I know, but I don’t get to make the truth. I can only write it.

The only escape is, of course, into that pharmacy or doctor’s office or wherever you get your annual needle-punch.

But at least now I can gloat when my cat misses a jump before she can twitch at me in glee. (Don’t worry, I’ll pet her until her pride comes back in scores.)

So thanks for the flu-shot, I guess.

P.S. Kari is beloved and so are her unceasing sanitation efforts.