COMMENTARY: Aches, Pains And Other Life Skills

Thursday, December 5, 2013

I’ve got to get better at this “being sick” thing. OK, not really sick, like the kind where you actually have to go to a doctor and get a real live diagnosis and all that stuff . I mean sick like I’m just kind of grouchy and whiny and I complain a lot. In other words, me normally, except with a slight fever.

It actually looks sort of fun when other people do it. You sit on the sofa in front of the fire, all bundled up and drinking hot chocolate. Like being on a ski trip, except you don’t have to go outside in the snow and try to ride a couple of 2-by-4s down a mountain.

All right, so maybe your body is a biological battleground and you’re actually a little contagious. Played correctly and you can get soup. And, in the most extreme of situations, ice cream. I’d take a little internal germ warfare for that, and for complete control of the remote.

So if I just keep my eyes on the prize here, I could turn a little snift e into a mini-vacation, complete with caring, concerned room service. Or, something like that. Say, a 7-Up and not having to go to the store. Problem is, I’m just not much good at it.

I give it the old college try. Start with raspy cough, moan audibly, ask if anyone else is hot. I haven’t quite gone completely Ferris Bueller and licked my palms yet, but you can never rule it out. Life moves pretty fast, you know.

But Academy Awardworthy performances aside (that’s if they had a category for “Most Over-the-Top Malingering”), I just can’t seem to pull off imagined, or even real, minor illness.

For one thing, I’ve got this tiny little attention span, so I keep forgetting I’m supposed to be sick and start screaming at the game on TV. Jumping up and down and gesturing wildly while complaining loudly about a perfectly legitimate call is no way to convince anyone you’re an invalid. Better go with “delirious” at that point.

Then there’s the reality that I’m, shall we say, of a certain age. Which is all right, except that, at that certain age, something always hurts. So being able to narrow that down to a certain specifi c set of symptoms is a bit of a challenge. Feeling fl ushed, dizzy, disoriented, have a runny nose and are achy all over? Could be the fl u. Or Tuesday morning. Kind of tough to tell the diff erence.

As with most good personal issues, rather than accepting responsibility, I’ve elected to blame my parents. My father, to be exact. Dad had three fairly concrete rules about any illness we had: something that was normally on the inside had to show up on the outside; a typically useful body part had to be dangling useless; or you had to have a temperature that was equal to a setting on a crock pot. Absent any of those three, you were someone else’s problem for the next eight hours.

I recall one particular morning when I came downstairs and told him I couldn’t go to school because I didn’t feel good. He looked up from the paper and said, “I haven’t felt good since the Korean War. Hurry up or you’ll miss the bus.”

However, I do have one significant advantage here. Studies show people who are married live longer, and in my case, I can certainly understand why. I am probably the least self-aware person in the world, so it’s good to have someone around who notices you look pale, or seem to have acquired a cough or appear to have accidentally set yourself on fire. You know, the little things a guy might easily overlook.

It is, however, only slightly embarrassing to have to take your wife with you to the doctor so someone can answer questions like, “so how long has he been unable to lift his right arm over his head?” Because if he asked me, my answer would be something like, “I can’t raise my arm over my head? Wow, that doesn’t sound good. When did that happen? Oh, wait, that’s what I came in for.”

So maybe it’s OK I’m not so good at the sick thing. I should probably be enjoying the fact that, overall, I’m in pretty good health instead of bemoaning the fact that I’m not so good at milking it on those rare occasions when I’m not.

And that palm-licking thing? Nah, I’m good.