Getting Sick

Unless you are a super human, you know the feeling. You maybe miss out on a couple hours of sleep here and there, perhaps breathed in a little bit too much cold air, maybe you were kissing that sick person a little too intimately for a little bit too long, or maybe something is just overpowering your system. You wake up one morning with that feeling in the back of your throat. "NO!" You think to yourself, "I am NOT getting sick!"

So you ignore it.

By the end of the day you are definitely feeling worse and you think to yourself, "It's ok, I'll just get a good night's sleep tonight and have a nice warm shower and take good care of myself and everything will be ok." But it's not. You wake up a few times in the middle of the night cause you are all stuffy and your throat hurts and you go to the kitchen to take a bunch of Emergen-C even though you know its way too late for that stuff. Then, you go back to bed and think about how far you are going to get behind in school or work and whose going to yell at you when you tell them that you are sick and that you need to forgoe your responsibilities.

When I was young I liked it. I hated the fact that I was forced into the institution of elementary school, and I would even pretend to be sick sometimes. The funny thing is that sometimes I would pretend so hard that I was sick, that I would actually get sick. Yeah, I'm an awesome actor. The fake coughs would irritate my throat and get it red and make me cough more, and I knew ALL the tricks on how to make the thermometer read 99.8 degrees. (A full 1.2 degrees higher than the average body temperature of a healthy person.)When the final decision was made by my mother that I would be staying home that day, I would pout a little and tell her how dissapointed I was that I would be missing [insert some "fun" activity] at school that day and that I wished with all of my little heart that I could be there. I would then slowly walk over to the couch where I would pull the blanket over my tiny shivering body and pretend to sleep; I was really shaking because I was so excited that I didn't actually have to go to school that day.

As I have gotten older, I have realized that being sick, or even pretending to be sick isn't as great as it used to be. Back in elementary school, missing a few days here or there, or even a week at a time was no big deal. You would just show up with your weekly homework packet on friday and everything would be fine. When I reached Jr. High and Highschool, however, it got serious. Missing even a single day would put me so far behind that all my grades would drop. Work was even worse.

Having worked in a food service for two years, every work meeting they are always telling you time, and time again. "DO NOT COME TO WORK IF YOU ARE SICK!!!" They would say this multiple times and in multiple different ways to make sure that the got the point across. Now the rule for calling in sick was that you had to call in sick at least two hours ahead of time so that they could find a replacement, or else you would get written up. In the two years that I worked there, I think I called in sick maybe two, maybe three times. I would always call in 5 hours ahead of time, yet the reaction that I would get was still almost violent. They would be mad at me the next time that I came in to work, and even cut my hours sometimes. Towards the end of my employment there, I would just come in anyway if I was sick because I hated getting yelled at for calling in sick, even though they made such a big deal of not coming in when you were sick. Hypocrites.

As I have gotten older, it is no longer fun or feasible to pretend to be sick because I have responsibilities that still exist, even if I am lying in my bed for two days moaning and groaning. The world doesn't care. As far as really being sick, I dont like the feeling. I would rather be healthy and working than stuffy and have a headache and be throwing up and having a sore throat and playing video games.

Anyway, I have a sore throat so I'm going to go make myself some tea and take some Vitamins.