The Great Influenza

Posted by John

Something that’s really underrated for its awesomeness is the flu. I’m actually writing from experience right now as I’m alternating between laying on the couch wearing pajama pants, 4 shirts, a knit cap, and 3 blankets and kneeling in front of the toilet watching every ounce of liquid in my body swirl down the drain.

Here’s the thing about the flu – when you get the common cold you’re supposed to take the day off work but many people, myself included, ignore the warnings of the Centers of Disease Control and go to work anyway. But with the flu, unless you want to diarrhea in your pants in front of your coworkers, you’re forced to stay home. In fact, today is a Friday and I should be at work right now but I’m not because my mouth and my ass are alternately expelling everything I put in my digestive system like a goddamn ruthless WWF tag team. But you know what the thing is? I’m thrilled to be at home right now even if I can’t look at a box of crackers and a Gatorade without throwing up, that’s how much I hate working.

The other thing is, I was feeling a little chubby as of late, the result of four straight weekends of traveling on the road, eating more fast food than the average Wal-Mart shopper and drinking more beer than I have since I was doing daily canoe races in the dining room of the fraternity house. Now I think I’ve lost like 12 pounds in the past 24 hours and I look positively gaunt, like I’m auditioning for a role in the off-Broadway production of the movie Cast Away. It would have taken me weeks to lose this kind of weight using conventional means of eating healthy and exercising.

The fucked up thing though is, just this past Tuesday I actually got a free flu shot at work. Now riddle me this – how in the fuck did I get the flu after I got a flu shot. Is the flu shot not supposed to prevent the fucking flu? That’s like swimming in the ocean when someone throws you a life preserver made out of bricks and titanium. “Uhh… I was actually doing quite alright out here, treading water on my own, before you threw in this life preserver made out of bricks and metal. Now I’m finding it a bit difficult to stay afloat. In actuality, I’m struggling pretty mightily at this point and don’t know how much longer I could survive like this. Perhaps you could throw me another life preserver that is actually intended to preserve my life… please…”

Plus, spending hour upon hour laying on the couch in front of the tv has afforded me the opportunity to catch up on a tremendous backlog of DVR programming. The Daily Show, The Office, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Project Runway, Conan, Jimmy Fallon… I’ve never been more current on my television viewing since I was 8. (Speaking of which, I absolutely cannot fucking believe Chris was in the bottom two on the recent The Sky is the Limit, Project Runway episode. Granted, the dude almost deserves to be kicked off for his inability to control his crying and that stupid fucking chin strap beard (which, by the way, I rocked for the first week of college… in 19-fucking-97!))

Staying home from work with the flu also gave me the opportunity to have a Comcast Tech come out to the house to fix our internet service which has been jacked up for the better part of the week which otherwise would have cost me a legitimate half day of vacation to meet with him, although as it was, it almost resulted in catastrophe.

Dude called shortly before 10AM and said he’d be to our house in a few minutes. I typically associate “a few minutes” with 5-10 minutes, but I understand not everyone has the same outlook as I do. The problem was, round about minute 7 my stomach started to get really angry but I knew I couldn’t run to the bathroom because regardless of what was going to happen, it wasn’t going to be quick and it wasn’t going to be pleasant, and the last thing I wanted was to be in there when the guy showed up. So I waited. Minute 10 yielded to minute 14 yielded to minute 19 and still no technician and still an even angrier stomach. Finally, just as I was like, “Screw it, I’ve got to take care of this,” the dude pulled up in his goddamn van. Fine, whatever. It was only a faulty modem and it was only going to take him a few minutes to change it out; I could hold on. That was until he rolled up to the door and was like, “I’m going to start checking everything outside the house then work my way in.”

Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!

“Fine, you can do this,” I told myself,  “just be calm.”

So I saw him get his ladder out, climb the telephone poll, attach a new cable, run it over to my house, change all the connections, etc., etc. All the while my brow was dripping with sweat as my intestines felt like William Wallace’s on the executioner’s table.

Finally he came inside to report, “I ran a new cable to your house and while I was up there I noticed your neighbors had a loose connection so I fixed that too and…”

And all I could think was, “Fuck my neighbors!!! My large intestine is trying to evict my small intestine while you’re out there making sure my neighbors have perfect reception while they’re watching So You Think You Can Dance!!!”

Finally he got around to servicing the modem and all I could do to distract myself was focus all my energy on a DVR episode of Jimmy Fallon. Well apparently the goddamn technician had the same idea because instead of fixing the modem the sonofabitch was sitting there watching Jimmy interview the Mixed Martial Arts juggernaut, Kimbo Slice, laughing to himself and saying shit like, “Oh man, that guy is a beast! Have you ever seen him in action.”

Holy fuck man, if you don’t hurry the fuck up here you’re going to see me in fucking action as I Kimbo Slice you into a million fucking pieces!

The room started to spin and I began to fade in and out of consciousness. Had there been a light I certainly would have walked toward it.

Finally the shit stain technician was like, “Well, I’m getting a solid signal on your modem here so I don’t see any need to change it out. If you’ll just sign this paper I’ll be on my way.”

I knew the modem wasn’t fixed but the lights were glowing the proper shade of green and I didn’t have the luxury of arguing with him given the fact that I was already 15 minutes past the point of no return.

I lingered long enough to watch the guy get in his van for fear he would discover he left his screw driver on the desk or something then walk back into my house to find me standing over my toilet, the porcelain shattered into a thousands pieces under the force of the explosion that had just emanated out of my fucking body. So just when I was in the clear I made a break for the bathroom, though out of the corner of my eye I saw the lights on the modem flashing orange – catastrophic failure.

You fucking whore! I knew it was the modem! I knew it was the fucking modem!

At that point I had a decision to make, and believe me when I say it was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make in my life. I decided to run… nah, shuffle out to the guy’s van to catch him before he drove off to demand he replace my modem. He agreed but I swear to you he couldn’t possibly have worked any slower if he’d left his fingers in the van. The whole time I was just staring at him thinking, “You’re a fucking whore! You’re a fucking whore!”  While my stomach inside me was saying, in the voice of Charlton Heston from the movie The Ten Commandments, “You know no fury like the wraith of a stomach scorned! You will pay mightily for your indiscretions here today!!!”

Suffice it to say, my internet is back up and running and all of my internal organs stayed inside my body. Unfortunately I’ll be replacing my toilet now.

The overall moral of the story is, next time you find yourself with the flu and your ass is doing an impersonation of a garden hose, rather than curse the gods, look to the bright side of things – you could be at work.