That's not sick, that's funny

Everybody at my house is sick. Usually what happens in a family of any size is people take turns. The five year old drags some malicious germ home from the playground jungle gym. He rubs his nose on a variety of household surfaces before his symptoms become obvious enough to warrant quarantine in his room. Just as he starts bouncing around, the nine year old sister is the next to fall. She covers her mouth every fourth sneeze. On the other sneezes she sends a scatter pattern of bacteria like a shotgun loaded with ten million pellets of poison. When she starts feeling up to pestering her little brother again, the teenager succumbs to the insidious microbes. Since he whines as often as he talks no one has any sympathy for him until he has thrown up more than an entire fraternity on St. Patrick’s Day.
The mother, by now, has spent so much time medicating, soothing, feeding, cleaning, calming, and tucking in all the victims she starts to feel a little queasy. Before you can say, insurance co-pay, she has a fever and the energy of a three-toed sloth on Quaaludes. This is when the father puts on his jacket to head to work making some crack about he wishes he could stay home all day in bed watching television. At this moment the only reason he isn’t spending the weekend in a hospital bed watching his heartbeat represented on a tiny screen is his wife cannot get out of bed.
It is just one of the many injustices in life. After about the age of two a person is not allowed to stay in bed all day without being accused of being a lazy no good bum. The only way one can get away with it is if he or she has symptoms including, or even combining, pain, violent gastro-intestinal episodes, and/or coughing fits requiring the wearing of a truss to avoid permanent injury.
Different people have very different styles of being sick. When I am sick I pretty much want to be left alone. Occasional words of pity are welcome, but otherwise other people in the vicinity just annoy me. It may be true that other people in the vicinity annoy me when I am not sick, but in my weakened condition I don’t have the restraint to avoid telling them to buzz off when I am unwell.
Being a stoic person has come to mean someone who does not show emotion. There is a sort of continuum of stoicism for people dealing with being sick or any kind of pain. This range has to do with what it takes to elicit emotion.
Category #1 – Very Stoic: These people can step on a LEGO left on the floor at two o’clock in the morning and not only avoid yelling loud enough to wake the neighborhood but they don’t even dance about like a hyperactive Pip. They go to work with a high fever, stomach cramps, and a migraine. While showing admirable toughness without complaining these people need to be dragged back home and tied to their beds before they can spread germs to innocent bystanders. Just because you’re so tough doesn’t give you the right to transport your virulent body into my personal space.
Category #2 – Rather Stoic: These people cuss when hitting their thumb with the hammer, but only use words permissible in PG-13 movies. When sick they admit it but do not advertise it to anyone and everyone. They are capable of whining, but only to their spouse in hopes of getting a foot massage.
Category #3 – Stoic, Schmoic, I want some Sympathy: These people limp like Zola Budd running on a bed of broken glass if they so much as have a grain of sand in their shoe. An indication that they may have a predisposition to one day get mildly unwell causes them to whimper like a puppy. A hangnail elicits a trip to the emergency room because cutting it off with no anesthetic whatsoever would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
Category #4 – Mock Stoic: These people may be the most annoying. They make sure you know they have something wrong with them, like a strained muscle. Then every time they move they make little noises. When bystanders ask, “Are you okay?” The Mock Stoic carefully places a half grin half grimace on his face and says, “Oh, I’m fine really. It only hurts when I sit down, or stand up, or lie down, but I’m okay.” It is my opinion these people are fair game for a poke in the eye so they can experience real pain.