Take It To The Limit

What does it feel like to be stabbed? This is one of the many questions posed by life in general I have no curiosity about. Others include: what does Marmite taste like? How hard is calculus really? How many push-ups could I do if I really tried? Whatever happened to Tina Yothers?* Is it possible to bring your sexual partner to orgasm? And certainly my all-time winner for an absolute planetoid of indifference hanging in a black and formless void of who-gives-a-shit, What are some other Eagles songs besides "Hotel California"? I'm sure you know some, probably right off the top of your head! And you might even feel inclined to share in comments. Go crazy, man! I won't get mad, no, that would be the opposite of indifference. I'm certain my eyes would scan the comment, decode the words, understand what they are suggesting and then never ponder them ever again.

It's not that I'm an incurious person, far from it. I have an advanced degree, I'll have you know. You don't just get one of those because you were in line for a more advanced degree, couldn't manage the requirements of academic life and took the lesser one as a sort of escape hatch/fig leaf offered by an embarrassed faculty who wanted to justify their up-front investment in you over the course of nearly two years. No, you get those by wanting to know stuff. For instance, I really wanted to know what it was like not to have a PhD in history despite the rare and awesome opportunity to acquire one. And now I do. How many people do you know who can say that? I've seen some mountaintops, reader. Mainly from a distance as they are being summited by other people.

I read books. I've watched television shows and films that were designed to be informational and not just entertaining. I know stuff, like watch this: hypotenuse. Not everybody knows that word. Also this: a rabbit home is called a warren. It's not particularly obscure, but it still counts as information! These are things I had to look up. And definitely not just for this piece, no;  just because I wanted to know them. Does this make me an intellectual? OK, not on its own. But keep in mind, I do wear glasses. Prescription ones

All of this is to say: I have no wish to know what it's like to be stabbed. Or to have to recover from being stabbed. Over the past two weeks, I have been what the British sometimes call "poorly." Some fucker somewhere gave me a common-as-fucking-anything cold. I had to miss a day of work, I was so be-sinus'd. As per usual, this traveled down to the chestal region after a few days, but I was on the mend when some other fucker (this time likely a blood relative who shall remain nameless as he coughs himself to sleep in one of the rooms down the hall in the house that I PROVIDE FOR HIM) gave me a SECOND cold that whacked me right in the throat. And then during the course of hacking and coughing my way through that virus, at some point, probably a fluke of a tweak while sleeping and coughing, I managed to pull a muscle in my rib cage.

Now, if you're a curious person like I am, I would like to take a second to offer a tiny bit of advice: NEVER PULL A MUSCLE IN YOUR RIB CAGE. That shit is Not. Comfortable. Add a cough to it and yes, I've never been stabbed, but I feel like I have the sensory imagination now to conjur the sensation every time the inevitability of a cough manifests itself. A trip to urgent care confirmed: there's not a single goddamned thing you can do about it, either.

I'm popping Advil as fast as my liver will allow. I'm walking around in my days trussed up like a Kardashian, with an ace bandage around my rib cage and sternum holding in place not my girlish hourglass figure but a sticky Icy-Hot adhesive patch, so all day I smell like a YMCA circa 1980.

It's annoying. It's so annoying it's making me begin to annoy myself the more I complain about it. The bad news for you is you're a willing, opt-in audience. What else could I possibly focus on while this is happening? I could write about some Trump shit, but I already told you I'm not interested in learning what it feels like to be stabbed.

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*No offense! Honestly hope she's doing fine, but not enough to even type the characters to form her name into the google search box. My god, just let her be.