You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Virus.
As I write this, I have the unbelievable desire to wash my hands.
I want to peel off a layer of epidermis, and make sure I am cleansed with an antibacterial shield.
I need to be clean, to be sterile, to be free of germs.
I want to run through a car wash of Purell and let hoses blast me with hot water. I want scrubbing bubbles churned by massive brillo pads whipping me into a clean so clean, you can eat off me..
I to want to be scrubbed more thoroughly than Edward Snowden’s hard drive at the NSA.
Why such a need to be cleansed?
I am interviewing an infectious disease doctor and he is a talking medical encyclopedia.
Though the doctor is bathed, though he wears a white coat, though we are in a sterile hospital setting, I feel like I have biological cooties.
He is an infectious disease doctor. I don’t like his expertise. It is microscopically creepy. I don’t like the word infectious. I don’t like the word disease. The two words together create something worse than their individual parts.
It’s like Stool & Sample. Or body & odor. Or Kim & Kardashian.
I like big problems I can see with only a pair of store bought reading glasses. I like medical issues that spurt and spew and are severed. I like my doctors to stitch and sew and play golf on Wednesdays.
Infectious Disease Expert?
This guy’s life begins and ends in the invisible spectrum. His key card for work opens up a door to a mysterious place under under a microscope.
His desk is a petri dish full of mutations and biologically festering organisms.
If God had wanted us to see disease, he would have made viruses big enough to cut with a knife.
That’s my fear. I want my viruses big as cows on the range. I want to be able to go up to a virus in a barn, pet it’s coat and call it Elsie. I want my virus to fill a pail of milk and then kick over a lantern and burn a city.
PERCEPTION IS REALITY.
My unfounded and unsubstantiated perception is that I am going to die immediately after this interview.
Like scrambled eggs in a dryer, My brain is racing, telling me that I am going to get Influenza, get sick, go to the intensive care unit, suck down 3 gallons of antibiotics through a straw, then drown in a pool of my own fluids.
I know this cannot happen.
But what if?
The what if scenario is a wild card.
What if God fought Superman?
What if sharks could fly?
What if the New York Jets had a real quarterback?
“It’s still not to late to get a flu shot,” the infectious disease expert tells me.
As I listen to this sagacious disease doctor speak, I keep thinking about sickness.
I wonder if there is a monkey virus like in the movies, I think to myself.
I imagine secret biological military installations deep inside a corn silo. I see 20 foot concrete walls and soldiers with automatic weapons and red swirling lights.
I know doctor virus is just talking about the flu, but my mind is dizzy, like a bag lady in the tea cup ride at DisneyLand.
While this clinical expert speaks, I imagine inhaling a few microscopic cells from some fire breathing dragon of death. I sniff the air. It smells like soap. Is that a good sign, I wonder? Or is that the smell of mutated simian death?
Where would mutated simian death come from I ponder, as the man eloquently continues.
I look at the vents on the floor. I detect the subtle movement of air. Who knows. Maybe they have escaped from their pressurized cell and are now looking for a host organism to infect.
The mutated simian death cells have escaped, like the Shawshank Redemption, and they are headed for Mexico to find a better life.
Not a pleasant thought. I wonder what would get me sicker ;Invisible monkey Death or licking the counter after preparing raw chicken?
Hmmmmmm.
“So we urge all pregnant women to get vaccinated,” He says with a smile.
Why is this guy smiling I think to myself. Does he secretly know I am infected?
I imagine the spores of crazy monkey sickness spreading into my lungs, absorbing into my avioli, at the cellular level.
Woosh…
That’s the sound of the monkey death train leaving the station as the monkey seed hits my blood stream.
Bam.
Within 4 hours, my eyes will fill with coagulating tainted blood. Within 6 hours, my nose will bleed a purple, space sickness type blood.
In 8 hours, I will be dead, found behind a dumpster clutching a bible and a stick of Beef Jerky, perhaps the only two known cures.
I re-focus on my interview subject.
“50 people in the last few days have been admitted for confirmed flu,” he says. “One person has died.”
One dead, I muse. Just one dead? In my head, Nashville is all ready an ink splot of Armageddon on some massive board inside the CDC’s war room.
“If you haven’t got the vaccine, you should run, not walk, to get it now.”
He is staring at me with an avuncular prescience.
It’s as if he senses I am not inoculated. He knows I am a human petri dish of percolating contamination. In his infectious world of right and wrong, I am wrong.
“Wash your hands,” I hear him say between an intensifying beat of my own heart in my ears.
“Washing your hands, and staying away from those who are sick is a good way to stay virus free.”
I want to bathe right where I stand. I look at the ceiling wondering if it’s not to late to install a decontamination shower.
Though I’m conducting an interview, though there is a young lady in the room, though I am wearing a suit and tie, I want to disrobe and scrub my pores clean with a fire place brush.
Can you imagine that visual. Cowboy boots, underpants, a tie around my neck, and a lather of sanitized goo dripping off my pasty white boy body.
Damn Flu.
Not gonna get me.
I use to get a flu shot each year. Why wouldn’t I? It’s free and they come to my work place and they serve cookies.
It’s a trap. It’s why we put peanut butter on the mouse trap.
To lure in the rat and then let the coiled spring slam down on his little rat neck.
So I took the medial bait. I did my corporate duty. I took the flu shot at their request.
But it seems like every year I got a flu shot I got the flu.
Hmmm.
I get the flu shot. I get the flu.
Now I’m no computer wiz kid at snapchat.com, but I took 10th grade geometry. I know an isosceles triangle when I see one.
in my monkey tainted brain, flu shot = flu.
Why wouldn’t it, right?
You are injecting the Ebola strain right into your body.
maybe your white blood cells are sleeping, or on a 3 day work vacation in Vegas ordering call girls to the room.
How do I know this is such a good idea.
“It’s just a myth,” the viral expert says. “You cannot get the flu from the flu vaccination.”
And there’s my proof. He said so.
Again, I’m not convinced.
I am completely sure that getting a free flu shot and a cookie is NOT worth getting the flu.
I mean the cookies are good and all.
But snap my head off in the mouse trap consecutive years and I’m going to get wise to your scheme.
If you have ever had the flu, you know it’s a nightmare.
Gobs of goo filling your sinuses, your lungs, every vacant space in your body.
You have more sickness inside of you than a New York City storage facility.
And regular coughing won’t work. You need subsonic bursts of expectorated air.
You need the concussive force of a TNT blast to dislodge the crud from deep within your soul.
When a booming cough so strident, so powerful, won’t loosen what’s ever deep inside of you, well then, that’s when you know you have the monkey virus.
When you have the monkey virus, you cough so hard, seals on nearby buoys become amorous.
When you have the monkey virus, you cough so hard, windows crack and the codes department gets notified.
The monkey virus is bad like flossing with a steak knife is bad.
This doctor can call it the flu if he wants. I call it the invisible evil spawn of mutated death.
That’s kind of long for a business card, but you know what I mean.
And FLU is too kind a word. It sounds cute.
Like the lead character in a Disney film.
Little Flu Flu saves the day. Yay!!!
It’s Flowery FLU FLU filled fun flu foo foo. Yipee.
It’s daffodils and sunshine. I have the Flu today.
It’s like a Mother Goose Rhyme.
Stop and think people.
Flu is the incubator of death.
I think if we called the flu something more abrupt, aggressive, horrifying, more people would take it seriously and get a flu shot.
Sometimes to get attention you need to punch someone in the face. Imagine punching someone in the face with the Flu? That’ll get you
7-10 in the joint.
Instead of flu, call that purple gaggle of death in the petri dish, PERSPIRING ABOMINATION.
I got me a bad case of the PERSPIRING ABOMINATION.
That just sounds filthy evil doesn’t it?
You think that would scare some simple minded Americans into action.
“Yo doc, I got me that sweaty Abomination. Give me a shot of the juice, quick”
And then if you had the more lethal strain, the Monkey Abomination, all that’s left for yo to do is to call for a priest, because your ass is surely going to die.
Can you imagine the news reports.
And another confirmed case of the monkey abomination has claimed the life of a CPA in San Diego, California. Tonight. And it’s October 15th Jill, someone’s tax extensions are surely NOT going to be filed.
“Are there any more questions,” he says.
Apparently I have been day dreaming of death and monkey virus. The interview has come to a screeching halt.
I shake my head to clear the cob webs, and stare at the nice man in his white coat and brain dripping with microscopic knowledge.
“Nope. That should about do it,” I say packing up, trying to hold my breath.
“When will this air?”
“tonight at six,” I say aloud. Never if my eyes start to bleed I think to myself.
He smiles and I leave.
I need a bath. I need a car wash. I need a antibacterial soap I can swallow to wash my body from the inside out.
Remember folks, Monkey Abomination will mess you up.
Get vaccinated. According to the experts, only the cookies are bad for you.
Life’s Crazy™