Flummoxed

One of the big stories this past week was the flare up of a 21st century measles outbreak. I'd like to say that the measles would get people to reconsider their anti-vaccination stance. But who am I kidding? Lookout, the return of the plague is right around the corner.

Speaking of viruses, this past week, my friend John Wait lamented about the horror of coming down with the flu during a bicycle ride. During? Yes, that is what he wrote. It sounded awful, and I do feel bad for him. Still, I couldn't help but be bewildered at both the precision of identifying when he came down with the flu, as well as the circumstances surrounding it --  while riding a bicycle. How could those even be related? I've since come to accept that it's possible, that one could get the flu during a bike ride, but it seemed so weird to connect the two in the same thought.

I'd like to say that's the strangest flu story I've ever heard, but there's one even greater. A friend once told me that she got the flu from eating a hotdog. I'm not kidding. A hotdog. This wasn't the false food-poisoning, "barfy-flu", either. I would understand that a hotdog could cause barfing, because hotdogs are simply gross. But no, this flu was the real deal: a high fever, chills, body aches, etc. Anyway, I remember being utterly mystified by hearing that string of words fall from her mouth. So after gathering myself, I asked her to repeat it, just to make sure I didn't mishear her. Again she said, "I ate a hotdog earlier today and got the flu." Until that moment, I never knew that those words could be assembled in the same sentence. It was an astonishing claim. More so than saying they got the flu while on a bike ride.

I don't know about you, but these stories have left me flu-mmoxed.

To John Wait and anyone else suffering the calamity of hotdog-influenza: A hearty get well soon!

Happy Friday.Thanks for reading.

Tim Kazurinsky as SNL's Dr. Jack Badofsky c.1982