First Adventure: Coughing

So, as promised, I'm adding some snippets of my own life and mental insanity... here's the first.

My wife, Bishopette, is a teacher. This means that every few months she comes home with fresh germs from her students (who I'm sure are lovely, but I picture them as walking amoebas at this point--usually with cigars hanging out of their mouths, spreading pestilent fumes) and offers them to me by way of "breathing." I'm not sure why, it could be an immune system that was tempered by my childhood of swimming in a lake by my house that was (and is) comprised of 98% duck poop, but I only get sick about once or twice a year.

It's that time of the year!

Bishopette has had a nasty cough for a few weeks now, and her's has become a full-blown flu. I'm seeing the opening ends of it, meaning that I have SO MUCH fun coming toward me. I'm already coughing and spewing strange globular substances when I do, and my coworkers have taken notice of this. The reason they have taken notice of this is because the five of us that make up the IT department share an office with desks strewn about, and being five computer nerds... our social skills are greatly lacking. This means, at any given time, the noise level in our office is approximately -5 decibels. Any higher and we scurry away under our desks and hug our computer towers for protection.

So when I started coughing and wheezing, I caused a minor disturbance. One of my co-workers, who we will call Rico (I'm naming people in my life after characters from classic science fiction novels), had some cough drops readily accessible at his desk. By "readily accessible," I of course mean "had five different flavors and brands in his desk drawer". I was offered one and I took it on Monday, when my coughing began.

As I mentioned before, computer geeks like us sometimes have poor social skills, so throughout this whole week, I have been coughing and choking without really realizing that everyone around me is being made to listen to this noise:

"Huacccck! Chuuuaaaaak! Yuuugggghhhhhrrrrk!" Every five minutes. Rico, however, has noticed.

He constantly has reminded me throughout the week of his arsenal of cough drops by taking a few ever-so-silently from one of the bags and chucking them across the room like bolas. The resulting impact onto my brain reminds me of the noise I'm making ("Grrrrraaaaaauauuuccchcchchckckck!") and I sheepishly unwrap the cough-drop shrapnel and suckle at it, weeping silently as I remember why I have so few friends. Okay, that last part was a little dramatic.

I have some pretty awesome friends.