On Illness

I don't get sick like normal people get sick. Why should I do anything like normal people?

First I just feel lousy. Maybe I'm a little more tired or I have to blow my nose more often. Whatever.

Two days of that before I think to take my temperature, which anything above 98.5 constitutes a fever. That's right; I'm so cool, my body chemistry literally runs a tenth of a degree lower than average.

By this time I've sucked a couple green tea/honey/vitamin C lozenges. Now that I see a fever I'll start popping Day-/Ny-Quil like they're M&Ms and finish my day like usual.

Lay in bed for a weekend and I'm all better. I get this about once every seasonal change and during flu season, when everyone else is sick for two weeks and I take a half-day Friday and am fine by Monday.

The only real downsides are the following:

• tactile hypersensitivity - I feel every little eddy in the air currents like a scratchy blanket.
• I'm dumb.

Now this isn't a problem for most, but let's get down to the bones of it: I am smarted than a good percentage of human beings. I don't have to try hard, it's just natural for me. What keeps me from becoming completely conceited is the knowledge that I suck at everything else.

The one time I almost got beaten up in high school, I got out of it by explaining to a very large boy that kicking my ass was so easy as to be meaningless, proving nothing. I am a smart-mouth. That's all I've got. Now I listen to his metal band and we have fun drinking occasionally.

But man, when I'm sick I really have nothing. Things just do not occur to me. I'll miss double entendres, feed people straight lines and not even realize I'm setting them up for a joke.

It's like being average.

And now I feel conceited because this must be what all you normal people are like every day.



Man am I glad I'm not friends with normal people.