Wednesday, March 3, 2010

On Rage and Hysteria

Enraged doesn't quite cover the scope of my emotions at the moment.
Enraged, by definition, is to make extremely angry; put into a rage; infuriate.
I am extremely angry, I feel put into a rage, and I am certainly infuriated. However, this does not cover the borderline maniacal, hysterical, fury that also bubbles just under my chest bone. One could say I am hysterically, muderously, enraged.
For the love of all that is holy, somebody coughed onto my face.
MY.FACE.
A face is like the aircraft carrier of all germs: you can get in and out almost anwhere. They have all sorts of places to quietly sleep, reproduce, and thrive.There's the soft, conjuctiva of the eyes, the quicksand of the nostrils, gaping wound of a mouth (which, if you are 70% of the population, probably has an open cold sore on it at some point), and the black holes of the ear. And I essentially got maced in the face with bacteria.
I was sitting behind the desk at my place of work, quietly minding my own business. A patron of my work walks in, and I recognize him as one of my favorite customers. He has a question about our new services, prices, blah blah blah. He reveals he's been fighting a "nasty cough" for quite some time; I silently gag and pray he will have a sudden overwhelming urge to leave my work. Miracuously he does, but not before heaving a massive windstorm of cough onto my face, not three feet away from me.
Well.
Once I came-to from my rage blackout, I grope around the desk for a tissue and some antibacterial handgel. Somewhere far, far, away, I detect the client's muted apologies; however my ears are ringing from the white-hot hatred I feel toward him. I hack into my tissue, hoping and praying to undo the germ spread his own cough could have done to me. By the time I calm down, the client has long ago sprinted through the door. I am alone, seething, and my finger twitches over my doctor's speed dial (he's big on antibiotics). Reminding myself how important exposure to some germs can be, I hold off on the doctor call, but do not completely dismiss it. This time, because I feel so completely defeated, this time the germs win.

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