From student to student a kind of spirit is spreading through our school, bringing a manner of fulfillment to everyone it infects. I don’t know what it is, but everyone is getting sick. Is it the common cold? Who knows? I like to think of it as the Weekend Killer. You don’t get this on Monday and then recover by Friday, instead you contract it on Thursday and spend the rest of the weekend coughing, blowing your nose, and cursing in general.
Last Friday I came down with the Weekend Killer. It was heralded one morning by the sudden realization that my throat felt like one of those dry cracked deserts on which they’re always filming car commercials. So word to the wise, if you wake up one morning with the Mojave in your throat, you’d better start consuming Vitamin C by the brick.
I’m beginning to think the people at Vicks release illnesses as a part of a countrywide scheme, because the instant I needed Nyquil and Dayquil the price shot up through the roof. The standard Nyquil package has six doses, each secure in its own little blister-pack that, to the illness wary mind, are infuriating to open. Six is not enough, it’s never enough; and they know this.
So you buy two, 12 doses, which is too many. This is why most of us have two or three doses sitting alone in our medicine cabinet all year long. They have accumulated over time into a large Ziploc that has affectionately been called the “Ultra Medipack” which is on loan to FEMA in case of emergency.
Don’t think this illness is all sadness and overpriced medication. Congestion will let you enjoy what television has to offer at three in the morning. Infomercials have changed since I was a kid sick with whatever kids got sick with when I was young. Back then it was almost entirely kitchen related infomercials featuring Ron Popeil and the Ronco line of “-o-matics” and maybe once in a while old Jack LaLanne and his power juicer.
Apparently things have been taken in a new direction. Watching deep night television has become a strange and dystopian adventure, a bad dream combining Twin Peaks with Naked Lunch, especially when you’re ill. The Rice Brothers, who are twin “little-people,” tell you how you can make money. Every other channel is a commercial that claims there are women who desperately want to chat with me through ever-erotic medium of phone text.
More than anything there are the infinite loop Girls Gone Wild commercials. They proudly proclaim that “these girls are going wilder than ever before!” Considering that wild was already naked, I question what “wild” even means anymore. Eventually, to break the next “wild” benchmark, they’ll have to advertise something like “you thought these girls were wild before! You havn’t seen anything yet! Not only are they naked, but we’ve placed them on a deserted island together where they will fight to the death! Only one will come out alive!”
Once you recover you’ll be able sing in a deep baritone, and shortly after that you’ll sound prepubescent as your vocal cords clamor to regenerate from all the coughing. After that you can write your own column about it and post it on MySpace. I’m just a herald bringing the message of warning. The plague is coming.