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Stop right here

When I was little, being sick had this appeal to me that made it a cool thing. Of course I didn’t like really being sick, but over time every young boy learns how to fake it. You’ll learn that it takes little to trigger that turning point in your parent’s mind for them to decide “you’ll stay at home today”. All it takes is to make them worry just a little.

Unfortunately, over time parents learn along with their young boys. Until this other turning point occurs, when they suspect you to fake it every time, even when you are really sick.

While you grow from a young boy to a teenager, you learn more than how to fake your fever. You find out that being sick can actually feel awful. Growing up over time, you learn the toughest of all lessons: It can get worse.

All of a sudden, that coolness factor is a yellow Kodak print in the back of your mind, a dreamy reference of times when all you needed to get fever was a thermometer, a lighter and an unobserved moment of your own.

It seems that the older you get, being sick becomes more tedious or more intense. It may be true that a typical flu takes three, five days. When you feel like shit, your body doesn’t want to hear that. You want to move on. And so you wander around at night, feeling nauseous, sleepless, impatient, picking up a book, making tea, eating a yoghurt and spending the rest of the night on the toilet. On the third day you really hate your body.

Only after you walked your own path of passion, you gave in, broke down, gave up and rose from the dead; after you accepted your fate and let your body win over your mind, then, maybe, you are permitted to go and enjoy life. Eat more than you can, drink until you drop, rock all night, take an aspirin and stay up for as long as your body can take it; until that moment comes when it must tell you again, stop right here.

nursery