Moments of Clarity

I've been suffering the plague that's been going around for close to a week now.

I heard someone say that this week Illinois is supposed to get the year's most severe case of the flu.

I'm not sure how that's measured. The rational part of me wants to say there are charts and graphs that measure whether conditions are perfect for illness, including temperature, weather, when midterms are, etc. Another part of me just wants to imagine a Weather Channel radar showing a huge red cloud over Illinois, and in the key at the bottom of the screen between sleet and snow, it says "Plague". It's a plague-front.

Whatever the case may be, I have ascertained my own mutation of aforementioned "flu".

If there is any benefit to illness, it is that we are granted as special gifts from heaven little moments of clarity. These are pockets of pristine thought that pervade our normal bumbling existence to prove to us that, while we are ill, we are not dead. Nor are we worse off. We are merely stunted.

I, in a moment of grace, threw off my weighty shackles of illness while I was laying in bed. It was not a moment of understanding, though. I was granted a moment of questioning.

While trying to suppress my cough so as not to let it think it was getting the best of me, I realized my need for a good nose-blowing. As any male would do, I had a roll of toilet paper nearby, because, really, who buys a box of paper just for blowing your nose? Not me.

So, I, in my darkened room, peered out, and could magically see the effervescent white column of salvific perferation at hand. I was elated. And then it hit me. Like the flu itself, it hit me:

Why is toilet paper white?

Really? White? Is it necessary? Did someone have to point out the stark contrast between what perfect cleanliness is, and what comes from our bodies? Was it someone's cruel joke to mock our filth?

I don't know. I blew my nose on it. And I fell asleep.

Thank God for moments of clarity.

DL