Patient Zero

For the second time in as many months, I'm sick.

It started with a throat tickle last Wednesday. I told myself it was nothing. Or rather, I told myself it was some thing, just not that thing, a sore throat, the harbinger of illness. I even gave Wiff a very convincing argument that my sore throat was nothing more than a "mechanical disturbance." Maybe a caper had gotten lodged back there? At one point I think used the phrase soft palate. I almost believed it.

But I was proved wrong that night when I developed a fever and went to bed at 8pm, not to wake up until 1:30 the following afternoon. I'm sure a part of me knew all along. But I still felt betrayed. There's that little voice in the deep recesses of your mind that knows all. A caper? Are you insane? But it never speaks up loudly enough. Or more likely, I'm never willing to listen.

I'd like to tell you that being sick has given me a moment of pause, a chance to reflect, take stock, and appreciate the slowness of life; a moment to journal about how every raindrop on my window is a blessing from heaven, or how the chive blossom in my garden looks like a pink tie dyed dandelion. (I just took NyQuil.)

But that would be lying. 

I don't want to slow down.

I want to find the little punk who made me burn through eight boxes of tissues and strangle him.

Just as soon as I blow my nose again.

I've thought about it, you know, while I lay awake at night, coughing. I’ve wondered where exactly I was when the microscopic virus entered my body. Was it at that comedy show on Sunday? I bet it was that guy with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt in the front row. He looked sick. Or was it the girl he was with, the one who, at one point during my set, yawned? And what if I did find the exact time and place of the infection? What then?

Could I have done anything differently? Moved one step to the left just as she yawned, to dodge the cloud of sick? Or could I have just turned my head right, leaving the virus to bounce helplessly off my ear and down, right into her boyfriend's mouth? Should I have not talked with one of the comics after the show for quite as long, exchanging bad air because I wanted to make another joke?

It doesn't matter. It wouldn't do any good.

People do that with food poisoning. They always share their theory about how it must have been that Chinese restaurant, because did you see how dirty those chopsticks were? Or how it was definitely the sandwich place because they’ve never kept their deli unit quite cold enough. But it's pointless. There's almost no way to trace the illness and, even if you did, what good would it do?

We do this with small things, and then we do it with everything. I know people in comedy who talk about how messed up they are, and then give their or their therapist's theory on how it must have been their home life, because did you ever grow up Catholic? 🙋🏻‍♂️ Or how it was definitely because their dad never told them he was proud of them. I’m not a therapist, but at some point, explanation starts to seem less like progress and more like procrastination.

There’s a scene in Tommy Boy where Ray Zalinsky (Dan Aykroyd) steps into an elevator with Tommy Callahan (Chris Farley) and notices that Tommy has a peculiar smell:

“Went a little heavy on the pine tree perfume there, kid?”
“Sir, it’s a taxicab air freshener.”
“Good, you’ve pinpointed it. Step two is washing it out.”

Ray doesn't ask why. He doesn't ask how Tommy ended up in this situation. He applauds Tommy for identifying the smell and then tells him to fix it.

So the useful question is not where did my cough come from, but what am I going to do about it. Oh man, it would be so so so satisfying to identify the little carrier monkey who gave me the illness. But satisfaction doesn't help recovery. Sleep does. And maybe a glass of wine. Maybe something that goes with capers.