I’VE BEEN SICK IS NO EXCUSE [W, 1-15-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—I’VE BEEN SICK IS NO EXCUSE [W, 1-15-25]

 

I think I’ve told before of the lion who went through the jungle beating on his chest and yelling at each animal, “Why aren’t you big and strong like me?” The zebras and giraffes ran away. So did the tigers and rhinos. He finally came to the monkey. “Why aren’t you big and strong like me?” the lion roared. The monkey replied, “I’ve been sick.” [It’s better if you can hear me do it in my pitiful, pathetic monkey voice.”

I’ve been thinking of that ever since the column of Jan. 9, where I tell about my adventures at Morgenstern’s book store and Krogucci grocery store, because I picked up some germs at one of those places, and my body has been coughing and sneezing ever since, trying to get those germs to vacate the premises. Naturally, when the germs left me, they took up residence in Helen, so the sounds of coughing are heard throughout our small home, even though I started sleeping on the sofa to try to keep the germs away from her.

We are over the hump. The coughs now sound only like left-over coughs. We aren’t scrabbling for the cough medicine bottle in the dark. But it was such a surprise that we got sick at all.

But now I’m old. Apparently, I should have worn a mask on my old man’s day out, even though no one else was in the venues I visited. Perhaps especially because no one else was.

 

We haven’t entertained germs, not the kind that let you know they are there, for several years. The covid shutdown kept us from germs, but even before then, we had done all the vaccinations and germ precautions, like hand washing.

More recently, we’ve just not had much contact with germy people, because we’ve had little contact with people at all. We order groceries and pick them up in the Krotucky parking lot. We go to church via livestream. When people want to visit, we give them the wrong address.

It seems that our current germs are only for a cold, but there are worse germs out there, including RSV and bird flu. If you’re old and vulnerable, or your natural immunity has waned because your body is not used to dealing with germs, better double your efforts at mask-wearing and hand-washing.

But back to that monkey… The point of that story is that if you are a monkey, you can’t be big and strong like a lion, because you’re not a lion. If you’re a monkey, you don’t have to come up with an excuse for not being a lion.

If you’re a teen, you don’t need an excuse for not having the wisdom of old age. If you’re old and slow, you don’t’ need an excuse for not being young and nimble. Just be the best monkey you can be. If that involves a barrel and some other monkeys, wear a mask.

 

John Robert McFarland