Sick Days
Ever since I was a child person I have always known how to take advantage of the concept of “Sick Days”. It didn’t take me long to realize that I could get out of virtually anything if I could pretend to be sick enough. It doesn’t matter, it could be school, work, plans with annoying friends or lame family affairs, the sick day is universal and nobody can question you. It’s perfect!
My addiction to the sick day came when I was in elementary school. I wasn’t what I like to call a “popular kid”. I didn’t have a whole lot of friends in my grade. Elementary school was an awkward situation for me because I wasn’t popular and yet some of the hottest girls liked me… For a little while at least, until they told their ugly friends, and their ugly friends would make fun of them for liking me and it’d be over with. (This paragraph is a perfect example of my possible ADHD problem, as it has nothing to do with the rest of the blog.)
Anyways, my fake sick days really started off as fake sick half days. I can remember at lest 10 times within a couple month span in 4th grade when I would just give up on the school day, and my future just to act sick so I could go home early and eat colorful mini marshmallows and watch Mork & Mindy reruns… Apparently I was also gay when I was little, I’m glad I grew out of that phase.
To my dismay my parents quickly started catching on to my fake sick tactics. From then on out I had to use my gift for sick acting wisely. No longer could I just throw around my pure skill and talent for looking sick, haphazardly because it was clear that someone could get hurt… Me…
That’s right, I was actually hurting myself in the case of the fake sick and still did up until about a year ago. I would get so into the fake sick routine, the physical acting, the voice acting (for calling into work), that I would literally start feeling the horrific symptoms that I would make up. My fake sick would turn into a real sick. So either it’s all mental and my fantastic brain convinced my body I was actually sick, or the marshmallow sludge had eaten a whole through my stomach lining after all these years.
So about a year ago I decided that enough is enough and that I am no longer a fake sicker person guy. I’m an adult now, I have no reason to lie or be deceitful, that’s a child’s game. So now when I don’t feel like doing something with a friend, instead of acting sick I just tell them the truth or say “fuck off for a while please”. Or when I call my boss in the mornings to tell her I’m not coming into work, I just tell her it’s because I have other things to do, like a fake dentist appointment, or that “I’m just sick of you fucking people”.
People are truly understanding and I no longer have to fake sickness to get out of things. I’m all grown up now and finally feel like with this action I have cleared the “Adult” threshold. Now I get to stay at home with a clear conscious, and an easy stomach, while I eat my colorful marshmallows in peace. (I couldn’t tell if it was the color marshmallows or the Mork and Mindy reruns that made me the gayest, so I let the bad judgment of TV Land taking M&M off the air decide that for me.)
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By Robert on Oct 29, 2007
When I was a kid, I was like you, always using the “sick” card to get out of stuff, and like yours, my parents caught on. Every time I played the sick card, my mom would say “well if you’re that sick, then we better go to the hospital”, and of course I started to feel better (a miracle!). I never had a reply when she would say that…
On Thanksgiving day, 2003, I woke up with some mild back pain. It was very mild, but constant. No matter how I sat, or laid, it was there. So I took some aspirin and went to take a shower. This was about 8:30AM, and we had to go to my aunts & uncles house at noon for Thanksgiving. I really didn’t want to go, but can you do?
So I took a shower and as I was showering, the pain started to get more intense and I started to have shortness of breath. So I quickly took a shower, and got dressed. I decided I was going to lay in bed a little and relax, and as I was walking towards my room my mom said “What’s wrong?” and I said “I don’t feel good..” and she replied with “Well you’re still going!”. I got to my bed and went to crawl in and as I bent over, I felt the most excruciating pain in my chest and made this “ARGH!” sound and yelled to my mom “I think I am really sick”.. and then she said her magic words “well if you’re that sick, then we better go to the hospital”.. the world stopped.. time froze.. for the first time I was able to reply to her “YES! Let’s go to the Hospital”.. and that’s what I said.. “YES! Let’s go to the hospital!”… she was shocked.. frozen in her steps.. she couldn’t believe what I said.
To make a long story short, we went to the ER, and turns out I had a collapsed lung - Spontanous pnemothorax. I had to stay in the hospital for a week with a tube in my chest that was removing the air around my lung so it could re-expand.
Never again did she use the “well if you’re that sick..” response.. and never again do I play the sick card.
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