Please Don't Tap The Glass

A week ago I caught a cold. You know the kind... one of those run-of-the-mill, common colds, that are so irritating you just want to die. The hacking cough, mucus snorting , sore throat inducing, sleepless night dealing kind of illness that they haven't found a cure for yet. I did the only thing you can do when you catch the "common cold", I treated the symptoms. I took three days off work to rest. I drank buckets of tea, bought two different types of cough drops, cold medicine and vitamins. I slept... a lot. And finally, after a week, I started to feel better... until yesterday.

Yesterday I was feeling so good that I was planning on going swimming on the weekend. I was pumped that I was starting to feel like my old, healthy self again and I was looking forward to the time when I'd have energy to burn when I felt it... a pain. It started out dull at first and only when I swallowed, but as the day grew long, the pain in my throat got worse until it felt like my throat was going to close up on me. I couldn't swallow and I was having trouble breathing.

At first I was scared and then, after I had thought about it for a while, I got angry. How the fuck did I get sick again so fast! These sore throat symptoms are different then the ones I had during the "common cold" I had just endured. What the hell had I caught now! I was so angry I almost cried. For a brief moment, literally only a 24 hour span of time, I had felt like I was getting better and now this! I have always had the worst luck when it comes to viruses. I always manage to catch whatever everyone else has in, at least, a 100 mile radius of wherever I happen to be. Clearly, my immune system has never been the best, but I have been trying really hard lately to remedy that. I've been taking a multivitamin, vitamin C supplements and even tried switching my yogurt to the one with the live bio cultures to see if I could help my body fend off disease. But due to this recent sore throat development I feel that my efforts are in vain.

I've had enough! Drastic times call for drastic measures, so I have decided it is time to take my preventative measures to the extreme! After this sore throat has run its course I will never have a cold again! How, you ask? Well, I'm just going to live in a box. A really nice, bullet proof glass box that will be fitted over my head to protect me from catching nasty, little germs. I was inspired by the masks doctors wear, and that you now sometimes see people wearing in the subway. These masks protect your nose and mouth from breathing in contagious germs, but they neglect to protect the eyes and ears. That's when I thought of the box. A nice glass box would protect your whole head from germs, much more effective then just a flimsy mask. I was running this idea past my friend Mel when I thought that maybe walking around with a glass box on my head would garner some attention, possibly unwanted attention. I thought of people coming up to me on the subway and asking about the box, maybe even touching the box... it wasn't a pleasant thought. So, I have devised a sign to place on the lower right hand corner of the glass box. It will say "please don't tap the glass". Original, no?