let's get the story straight

I try to open my eyes on this grey autumn morning and find that during the night an evil-faced troll has painted my lids shut with a crusty greenish glue and it's another sinus infection.  Hopefully, you're not ingesting a fried egg with wiggly uncooked white stuff as you read this but I am not wasting time in any doctor's waiting room today.  If I plead for antibiotics he will push his chair back, cross his arms and give me a steely glare which clearly implies I am the sole reason for the establishment and proliferation of every super bug in the past decade. I don't need this crap and besides I can tell I'm better.  The swelling and drooping skin has receded and I no longer resemble a stroke victim and it is safe for me to resume my place in the social environment as we know it.

I am driving to the pharmacy to peruse the eye ointment aisle and to score some candy corn.  I am sitting at a red light and on the rear window of the soccer van in front of me are pencil silhouette decals of a family including mom and dad and little kiddies lined up by size and even a puppy at the end.  I hate these displays of familial harmony and I see the driver is indeed a soccer mom and she is anything but pencil thin and I imagine her large well-padded body rolling over on that little puppy and crushing the canine life out of him.  Daddy will be out there tomorrow morning with a scraper getting the last shreds of puppy stencil off the window.

I cease to be a reasonable, empathetic human being when I am sick.  Like small children I cannot see the day ahead when the mucous will dry up and it won't hurt when I comb my hair.  I have the midwestern farmer's habit of reading the obituaries each day.  There are countless stories of how Mr. Kuperschmidt and multiple others "fought but lost a brave battle to cancer."  That won't be me.  My account will read, "she cursed and kicked and screamed the whole way and bit a few argumentative medical personnel as well." You fight your battles your way and I will fight mine, the little unbrave street fighter I was destined to be.