My appointment for a flu shot is two weeks from today, and I am counting the fucking days. In the meantime, I find myself listening for sniffles to avoid at the office and washing my hands like an OCD patient with the intensity of a man who found out too late after a night of whiskey and Italian street sausage that there were only two squares of toilet paper in the stall.
I am enthusiastic about my appointment with a painful injection because I’ve gotten the flu for the past two winters straight. I made fun of the experience on the first go-round, but for the record, I wrote that a day before my fever spiked and I lost my voice for about a week. Which, although uncomfortable, at least pleased my girl to no end: “How about another episode of Iron Chef? If you object, please say so.”
“Nhhhhhht Irhhhhhhn Chhhhhf!”
“Iron Chef it is!”
“…Fhhhhhk Yhhhhu.”
I skipped the chortles on last year’s bout because… well to be fair, mostly because I was lazy (Check the Archives dropdown for the shameful September 2007 to February 2008 gap). But also because by the fourth day of 102 plus fever, I had bronchitis bad enough that I horked up bright bloody wads three mornings in a row. Which is hilarious when you see a wino or a rich uncle with a favorable will do it, but is somehow slightly less funny when you see it come out of your fifteen-years-of-two-packs-a-day lungs.
So I’m not a big fan of needles, but: if you’re telling me that I don’t need to spend a week shivering under blankets unless I decide to sample some homemade Vietnamese Bee Whiskey? That something can keep me from needing to get a chest x-ray and spending a weekend grinding my teeth waiting for some radiologist to tell me if I have emphasema? Sign me up, science! You say it’s a dead vaccine? Who gives a fuck! I don’t care if it’s a mix of bat urine and Ron Jeremy cum, let me roll up my sleeve!
Dear American.com – 