perfidy

Everything, it seems, moves faster in this internet age. Yesterday, I had the flu. For four hours. At six in the evening, I was right as rain. Wrapping up a day at the home office and center for world domination, and getting ready to prepare dinner for the buckethead gens. Then, at first so subtle I wasn't sure I felt it at all, body aches. I said to Mrs. Buckethead, "I think I'm coming down with the flu." She stepped two paces back in a heartwarming show of concern. I began to gather ingredients for dinner. I managed to grab the milk and of a sudden I could barely walk for the pain from all my muscles cramping up at once. I decided to forego dinner.

My son, frustrated by my simultaneous presence and inability to play with him, insisted that now that work was over, I need to go downstairs and play for a little bit. He hasn't learned to play the "You promised!" card, but its essence was heavily implied in his pleading tone. I shuffled downstairs, and very slowly laid down on the floor. It was now about quarter after six. I made a sincere but quite frankly ineffectual attempt to play with the boy. My feeble efforts were hampered by the fact that it is hard to handle small toys when your whole arm is shaking. I was shivering almost uncontrollably. I asked John to go upstairs and get another blanket. This helped not at all, but provided some moral comfort. The boy looked at me, and said in his most serious tone, "You need medicine."

I went upstairs, and collapsed on the couch. I piled three blankets and my banky atop my quivering body and tried to be stoic. From a distance I must have looked like a pile of vibrators set on "Insane" with dirty laundry thrown on top. It was now close to seven. Mrs. Buckethead felt my forehead and reported with her usual precision, "You're hot." I said, "I know, but do I have a fever?"

Then, I got delerious. I have vague memories of disturbing dreams involving police cars, dinosaurs, and Mike Rowe from the show Dirty Jobs trying to kill me with a baby seal. My wife reports that for the next two hours I lay there vibrating, periodically making terrible hacking noises and occasionally sneezing. Then, I passed out.

I woke up at about nine, feeling like I'd been beaten with the lead hangover pipe. I drank a pint of juice, a large tumbler of ice water, and brushed my teeth. I stared, uncomprehending, at the TV. By ten, I felt tired but normal. Well, as normal as I ever feel.

A complete course of the flu, painful and real, presenting all the symptoms in the normal order, in almost exactly four hours. Before I passed out, I managed to worry just a little about the bird flu. I remember reading stories of the 1918 pandemic where healthy people got on the train and died before making it home. I guess this wasn't that. But one of the weirder illnesses I've had. All in all, a convenient sickness that let me get in a days work, get sick, and still be ready for work the next morning. Unlike the lingering grippe suffered by my compatriot Johno. But wierd all the same.