contradictionary

my family has a set of proven methods of dealing with situations when i am sick. in these rare cases, they believe that:

a. i am faking it.
b. i am dying a slow, painful death from a high fever.
c. i have aids, or
d. i am faking dying a slow, painful death from a high fever when i really have aids.

if i wasn’t too busy facing the slow and painful aspects of the fever that has engulfed me over the past weekend, i’d laugh at their antics. some highlights:

**************

dad: what’s your temperature now?
me: 102.4.
dad: oh, that’s nothing. it’ll go away in a couple of hours.

[4 hours later]

dad: what’s your temperature now?
me: 99.8.
dad: AVAST! BATTLE STATIONS! ALL HANDS ON DECK! WASH HIS HEAD! FEED HIM TILL HE BURSTS! SCRATCH HIS EAR! CUT HIS TOENAILS! etc. etc. etc.

[commentary: clearly, a high temperature is of no concern under any circumstances. it’s only when my temperature must remotely resemble that of a human being that the troops are swept into action, and that all sorts of attention must be paid to me. especially annoying when all this happens at odd hours of the morning, when i’d rather be sleeping.]

**************

sister [on the phone]: hello?
me [coughing, sneezing, gagging and moaning at one go]: hello?
sister: you sound drunk. have you been drinking?

[commentary: i was under the impression that drinking and/or being drunk involved feeling a whole lot better than needing to cough, gag, sneeze and moan simultaneously. apparently i was wrong.]

**************

sister-in-law: how are you feeling?
me: not too good.
sister-in-law: i’ll send you some soup.

[the next day]

other sister: are you better now?
me: no, not really.
other sister: i’m sending you some soup.

[commentary: now, correct me if i’m wrong, but are there any empirical studies on the curative power of soup? i didn’t think so. however, my entire family thinks that a fever is the ideal time to mobilize the soup army. i’ve realized i should go into the soup business. i could make a bundle, just off my family alone.]

**************

dad: i heard you threw up this morning. must have been because you didn’t have any breakfast.
me: actually, the stuff i threw up WAS breakfast.
dad: well then, must have been because you didn’t have dinner last night.
me: but i did.
dad: okay. so it must have been because you didn’t have lunch yesterday.
etc. etc. etc.

clearly the solution for illness in my family, besides soup, is to stuff your face with as much as possible all the time. my family works on a very simple formula, i realized:

IF
cold.present()= true
fever.present()= false
THEN
input daily.food= X
WHERE
X= normal.food.consumed() * 25032
ELSE
cold.present()= false
fever.present()= true
THEN
input daily.food= X * 2423 + soup()
ELSE
cold.present()= true
fever.present()= true
THEN
input daily.food= X * 2423 * 2423 + soup() + soup()
ENDIF
IF
cold.present.duration>= 3 days
OR
fever.present.duration>= 3 days
THEN
patient.has.aids()= true
ENDIF

sigh.