Mark Hayter for January 2, 2022
“It practically wrote itself.”
It wasn’t until yesterday at midnight that I felt comfortable in the realization that I might live to see 2022. I wasn’t jumping up and down or anything, but, as I said, I was comfortable.
The end of 2021 almost did me in. Everything pointed to COVID. The new one. The, uh, Overcrumb? – What? Right, the Omicron. – What confuses me is the decision to use the Greek alphabet to name these viral variants. For those few of you who are as dumb as I, a variant is something like the last virus only different.
First, there was an Alpha that didn’t bother us all that much. Then there were two other “variants”, Betta and Chi. They developed but didn’t hurt us all that much. Then the fourth hit. Delta. Delta dawned badly. By the way, “Chi” isn’t the third letter in the Greek Alphabet, but it relates more to our “C”. Speaking of which, the Greek spell “cat”, chi alpha tau. Sounds like pharmaceutical.
The delta variant spawned several variants which each received a Greek letter. The next one was to be the 14 variant, “Xi”. Unfortunately, the Chinese president’s name happens to be XI Jinping. Immediately, scientists were cautioned not to rile China so, skip Xi and go with the 15th Greek letter which is “Omicron”. (I kid you not.)
Like me, most of you are asking yourselves, why is Mark going on with all this boring crazy stuff? I’m here to tell you that it’s because I’m sick! Remember the part where I didn’t expect to make it to 2022?
Several days ago that I came down with something bad. My nose would not quit running! I finally found it hiding in the cabinet next to the cashews. While there, I grabbed a bottles of nose spray that slowed nose a little bit. The next morning, I had a cough. It started somewhere just below my belly button and fought its way up to my throat, pulling everything along with it. Part of what it pulled was something that gave me a headache. Next was the sore throat.
At this point, Christmas and New Year's Eve were the farthest things from my mind. I begged Kay to find some of my decades-old pain pills. I begged her to rifle through all the closets, drawers, side tables, cigar boxes, shoe boxes, and band-aid canisters. All I needed was five pills. I gave her explicit orders to wait until I appeared easy, and then immediately push a pillow over my head and sit on it.
She thought about that for a minute and said, “Well, I don’t think it’s come to that, yet.” She had some shopping to do and would look for something that might help. After she left, I thought I would email Brad and let him know that I was near death. But, low and behold, he sent me an email. It read, “I can’t play racquetball Thursday because I don’t feel good.” I thought, Well, bless your heart, you wimp. Then he wrote, “By the way, you misspelled my name in your missive.” Missive? What the Sam Hill is a missive?
When Kay got home she found me on the couch blowing my nose on her favorite bath towel. She about lost it, so I asked her to see what it feels like to blow her nose on one of my towels. It’s like grabbing a handful of corn husks. She immediately pulled out a bottle of some dark red stuff. Supposed to be good for “Severe Cold and Cough’. It was the biggest letters on the bottle, so I guess that was the name. I took it to be a red NyQuil knock-off.
The stuff went down like devil’s brew, so I knew it had to be good. Before my mind left me completely, I asked Kay what “missive” meant. I didn’t even have to use it in a sentence. She said it was something written. Like a letter, memo, or poem. That really ticked me off. I said, “Here I am near death and Brad Meyerford is upset because I misspelled one of the eight names I gave him. I pretty much conked out at that point. The next thing I knew, it was morning and I was in bed.
I wasn’t well, but the powerful elixir made me not care so much. Kay informed me that she set up an appointment for a COVID test at Walgreen’s drive-through. I assured her that I knew what I had, but if she would stop at the store and get stuff to make me cake, I’d take the test. So, I got to stick the probe up my own nose, which is so much better than having a person plunge a stick all the way to the back of my brain.
When I got home, Kay started making a cake, and I sat right here trying to figure out what I was going to write. In a matter of minutes, I got a text from Walgreens, notifying me that my test came out negative.
Immediately my discomfort was less so. But I still had to come up with something to write about. I intended to think up stuff about 2021 or the New Year, Those are always tough pieces for me. Then it hit me. Bonk! I thought it best to go with this thing that you just read. So, unless something goes south in 2022, Next January, I can write about the year in review or the year ahead. -- Unless I end up with the omega variant. In which case, it’s either the pillow or the knock-out juice.
Photograph was intentionally omitted.
end
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