Everyone who knows me, and especially my wife, will confirm that I don’t do sick well. I’m a terrible patient – whiney, complaining all the time, etc. Fortunately I don’t get sick very often – the world would not be able to deal with it.
I can count on my hand the number of sick days I have taken from work since the 1980s. Partly its due to good genes, and a fairly healthy lifestyle. But in the early days, particularly when I worked for Deloitte and Touche, it was due to abject fear.
My trials and travails at Deloitte are fit for another day’s blog post – a great learning experience, friendships that last to this day, mixed in with a sociopathic work environment composed of 16 hour days, weekends and travel during holidays. But you simply did not miss work due to illness. I used to see colleagues in their offices who appeared to be one step from a mortuary, but there they were, slaving away. And if your kids were sick, too bad, you still had to show up. One colleague brought his infant daughter inflicted with Chicken Pox to the office. Of course I had never had it, so all it took was one unsuspecting visit by me to his office and … well that’s a subject of yet another future post.
Anyway, I’ve been sick all week, and have been working from home. Springtime here in Texas can be brutal for those with allergy sensitivities, and every once in a blue moon they hit me hard too. Well look outside – there’s the blue moon. I’ve been sniffing and snorting, coughing and generally been miserable. Finally its starting to get better, after five long days. For the record, I took a COVID test on Monday and it came back negative, showing that it is possible to get sick from something other than the bat flu.
But here in 2021 America, getting sick has a totally different connotation. I have been literally afraid to leave my house. If I walk into a store, a bank, or a restaurant sniffing and snorting the way I have been, everybody is going to freak out. I’ll be treated like I have the plague, and probably some assistant manager will demand I leave. There is simply so much COVID-related anxiety out there that I expect people to react in the very worst way. So better to stay at home, be a hermit, and let nature run its course. Thank you for this, viral gift from China.
I will be so glad when this COVID nightmare is beyond us, though I sometimes wonder if some people will ever be past it. I fear that it has permanently changed civilization. I hope I am wrong, but I fear that I am not.