A.K., bless his heart, was sick with a cold a couple of weeks ago, a cold I should point out that he gave to everyone else. As a matter of fact, Amanda is currently sick with a cold that originated, I would imagine, in the nostrils of some other five-year-old in A.K.’s kindergarten class.

Thankfully, it’s a private school.

(I really ought to write for 30 Rock; that sounds just like something Jack would say).

At any rate, A.K., while sitting at the dinner table two Sundays back, turned to me and asked point-blank:  Where does snot come from?

Kids, huh. But, still, I bet you’ve wondered the same thing. Before passing it along to Amanda, I was the one hunkered down with mucus, and every time I sneezed I both scared the older cat into a hairball fit and saturated my brave little Kleenex completely.

And, yes, like everyone else on the planet, I looked at it, afterwards. And, yes, just like I’ve done since the dawn of time, I asked myself, Where on earth does all this snunk come from? (That’s a little word I made up for it: snot + junk).

It’s endless. I keep a runny nose for days and days after the cold has, for all intents and purposes, lifted.

And so, I looked at A.K. and said, “I just don’t know.”

Because, scientifically, I don’t.

But, since scare tactics and hearsay pandemics run rampant in my family, I am more than prepared to offer a completely made-up, barely tinted with truth, panic-riddled response to his question.

Oh, the places you'll go.

It comes from other people.

That’s right: only about 10% of the snunk you expel during your Time With Tissue is your own.

Think about it. If you’re passing around a cold, the flu, a stomach bug, what have you, you obviously have to be carrying around the germs of other people inside you. That’s what your body is trying to get rid of, the foreign ick.

Your own homemade ick, it’s more than happy to kick that around the bloodstream, but someone else’s. Forget about it.

Amanda, poor thing, is sneezing out a few of her own germs, but most of that—is mine. And most of what I had—was originally A.K.’s. And god only knows where he got his from. I’ve seen his kindergarten class, and trust me, private schools are no respecter of persons…anymore than a cold is.

We probably have on hand, I’d posit, anywhere between 3 and 257 different people’s germs running around our nasal cavities, at any given moment, and every germ their germ slept with, too. Now, according to my formula, you have to multiply that by 1,000,000 when you’re sick…and also, you have to assume that half those germs passed out at a frat party the weekend before, so…ahem.

This is kind of fun, making this all up. Because it’s difficult to completely disagree with me.

We are harbingers and overstuffed storage units of germs. That much we know.

Add to that, that when we’re not sick with a cold, or runny nose, where is that mucus, then?  San Destin? If I carried around with me, all the time, the amount of Grody-Jodies I leave in those mountains of Kleenex when I am sick, then heaven forbid, I’d never smell another thing as long I lived. I’d be a mouth-breeder until the day I died.

That’s because it’s simply not there until someone else gives it to you, the snot, I mean.

It’s a little unsettling to think that at this very moment, the sniffles I’m still trying to evict from my nose are only partly mine. It’s also fascinating, though, for me to sit here and think about whose they were.

I pray this is self-explanatory.

Let’s see…the people before me who had this cold, in order, were A.K., Wynn, GamVa, U.L., and Dodie. I got sick soon after Dodie, and so I could, theoretically daisy-chain this head cold in the following manner:  Dodie got it from U.L.; A.K. begot Wynn’s, who begot GamVa’s, who begot U.L.’s, and then, if we traced it all the way back to A.K., then I could argue that, depending on all those others who were exposed and/or contributed to their colds, I am sitting at my keyboard under crud from well over twenty different people. I’ve got germs in me that have spent the last couple of weeks prior to moving in my nose at a bridge game, a catfish buffet, a swanky church Christmas party, two birthday shin-digs, a kindergarten class, and the emergency room.

They do get around, don’t they.

And to think, I’ve got remnants of all that lining both sides of my nose…no wonder I’m tired.

Sure this is a little disgusting for subject matter, but it beats feeling bad and sorry for myself. Because I cannot stand a runny nose. And I’m deciding to make the most of it, instead of being mad about. What would that change anyway? Nothing.

At least, at some point, it will eventually run its course. Unlike fat.

I remember, awhile back, I was working on this production, a premier of a show about witches called Maleficia. A woman who had been cast in the play quite happily lifted her shirt in front of me, baring her stomach, one rehearsal. She grabbed a handful of loose skin and said this was the reason for her diet.

“I’ve had this fat on me for the past thirty years,” she admitted, “I’ve lived with this fat for thirty years. It’s horrible. I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to live like that.”

I was at first shocked, amused, and then concerned.

My god, I thought, what about me. How many years have I lived with fat, of any kind, having grown accustomed to it. Like it was a natural part of me.

That. That was the real panic.

It makes snot pale a little in comparison, I think. Who wouldn’t love to pass a little fat onto to someone else. (Don’t look at me, please).

Fat, in this context, becomes a bit too intimate and personal for me. I’d almost welcome a thousandfold of germs in lieu of that box of sugar cookies I know is waiting for me at the house. But, the point is, nature knows what’s best. Colds come and go.

Fat, though, tends toward forever.

Skingrams: the future of weight management?

And the shame in that is this: We don’t intentionally make ourselves sick, but we don’t really stop from putting bad foods in our bodies, either. We find some way to deserve our fat.

That has to stop. For me.  And, I think I’m telling myself this more than anything else. This whole adjustment to a diabetic diet that I’m having to go through is making me sick, literally.

OK, no, just figuratively.

It’s merely ironic that I have a cold, I guess.

On the flip side, sneezing is still exercise.

And that’s good because it looks like I have a long workout ahead of me.

Sigh.

Related Posts:

• I couldn’t see the title of the book so it must have been about Scientology.
• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• Because that’s what beards are meant for: hiding fat.
• After that, I ate my chocolate cobbler in silence.
• Five foods that made me who I am.

There’s a reason people get sick—the attention. But, I’ve discovered as of this morning, there’s a reason good friends drive their sick friends to the doctor and then spend the next two hours in the waiting room having their patience tested—the neighborhood.

Of course, this requires explanation.

It’s 10:03 AM, and I’ve brought Amanda to the Student Health Center. She’s been very sick to her stomach, and I felt she needed better attention than my telling her to “take it to the toilet” every hour or so.

Little did I know the call to action that I was unwittingly engaging myself in.

I found a seat, in the corner, and began my determined sit. I flipped through all the magazines twice. I checked my Twitter, my Facebook, my email.

Thirty minutes pass, and still—no Amanda.

I drew the line at Highlights.

After nearly forty minutes of pretending to re-read Diabetes Living and Prevention, I was left with my nothing to occupy me but my old standby: the Imagination.

That is, until other patients started wandering through the automatic double doors.

Everyone carefully chose their seats, and unpacked their belongings. Sort of like setting up their respective houses: jackets came off, laptops pulled out, backpacks emptied. And that’s when it hit me. I wasn’t in a waiting room.

I was in a neighborhood.

The rows of seats, were roads and streets. The people in their chairs, homes of single-parent households and displaced migrant workers.

What I was witnessing was a community in the making. The birth of a neighborhood.

Communities, I think, are made every day in thousands of small ways. Some last a long time; but most are temporary. Like this morning’s community. This one was built entirely on stress, and was destined to become a community in constant danger of eviction.

And this neighborhood, like anywhere else, had as much to like as dislike.

I appreciated, for instance, the severe economy of conversation on my particular street. A Hello here and there, a respect for personal space, and then that’s it. No more. I turned to my neighbor on the right to ask him where he got his shoes.

I wanted a pair; I really liked them.

“Don’t know.” He never even looked up from his iPhone.

No filigree, no dragging it out. No pretense.

More neighborhoods should be like this, I think.

And even though you might argue that it borders on the rude, I should remind you that despite the fact that most communities are driven by what I would term “self-interest,” at least in this community, we were given the option of a Suggestion Box.

It’s also a very clean neighborhood.

And to top it all off, most of us get validated parking and pills, when it’s time to “move on.”

II

It’s 11:36 AM and eight new people have moved onto my street. I should say three, since one is a family of five. If I were having to guess, out right, I would say that I think at least three of them are here to be surgically removed from their cell phones.

Or, perhaps, to discuss the cost of having smiles sewn back onto their faces, and, if there’s enough money left over, an extra neck muscle that would act as a reflex to force you to make eye contact.

Two of the new neighbors are children. What joy.

They immediately engage themselves in a contest of who is the best jumper; their shoes skid from tile to tile, between the sitting area and the water fountain.

They whisper, how well-trained,  until the boy decides he’s the winner. The girl then hits her head on the water fountain and begins to cry.

Gutsy move on her part.

The mother takes all the children with her as she bravely crosses to the “wrong side of the tracks.” In other words, the doors that stand directly behind a large free-standing sign that reads, “No cell phone usage past this point.”

Connecting you everywhere except Bangladesh and Nova Scotia.

Who would ever want to go to that side of town? The whole point of having a cell phone is to keep connected to the world around you without having to be connected to the world around you.

The father stays at home…three seats down from me. This is, I imagine, equivalent to his being on vacation.

How well-trained.

III
Returning from the bathroom, I see that my nicely shoed friend has moved. Disappeared. It was inevitable, I know, but I was hoping to ease him back into a conversation, enticing him to offer me at least three shoe store options for my own research.

I really wanted a pair of those shoes.

In his house now, sits a young woman, blonde and covered in what I would assume was every sweatshirt she owned.  She was patiently sitting, reading a book. I couldn’t see the title of the book and so therefore, it must have been a book about Scientology.

I was mentally preparing her a Welcome to the Neighborhood casserole when she began to cough without covering her mouth.

A nurse pops out from behind the No Cell Phone Usage sign and calls, “Emily?”

The blonde girl closes her book and coughs her way over to the nurse and slips behind the wooden doors.

The nerve.

It was going to be a really good casserole, too.

IV

12:00.

I feel fairly certain than Amanda has, at this point, decided to give her body to science. I’m going over What Steps To Take Next, in bringing this to the attention of her family when a rogue wheelchair carrying, magically, a large woman in it comes hurtling around the corner, down my street.

Closely behind it, lumber two equally large children hollering that they were “sorry, Momma! But Chelsea wouldn’t hold my Coke!”

I don’t know how that adds up to a runaway heavyweight, but it did.

I only stopped laughing because an emergency then occurred: a young man had been hit by a car, while making a left turn on his bicycle and didn’t know who he was, or where he was. He all but crawled up onto the receptionist’s desk while he waited to be admitted.

He was immediately ushered away.

I was glad for that. That kind of neighbor really depreciates the value of the whole neighborhood, you know.

I checked on him. He’s going to be just fine, so there.

Do you suppose if he never remembers his name that he’ll still have to pay?

V

Fifteen minutes after twelve, and Amanda finally emerges. Diagnosis: severe stomach bug, which if I had to draw a picture of it, would have the pinschers of a praying mantis, the head of a dung beetle, and the body of a lion.

Also, a beak.

She’s going to pull through. Thank goodness.

Opinions are like...oh, you know the rest.

As I start to pack things up, Amanda traipses over to the pharmacy to wait for her medication. I pass the Comment Box on my way out and decide to leave them a suggestion myself:

With the flu season on our heels, it might behoove you to consider creating a gated community within the waiting room.

Because the sick people are really needy.

Signed, Emily.

Oh, now. Don’t look so chagrined.

Every street has an Emily.

Related Posts:

• I daisy-chained the heck out of this head cold.
• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• I don’t have to use a walker to pump my gas.
• A word about Free Enterprise and blood pressure monitors.
• This is a sappy blog, and it was well overdue.