Jamie Gets Sick

It is my firm belief that all one has to do to prevent the common cold is to drink one glass of pure, extremely pulpy orange juice per day. Foreseeing the possibility that this may not always be available to me in Georgia, I packed some gummi vitamins, and I've been making sure to eat as much fruit as possible. However, recently I got my second cold while in Georgia. (I prepared for that, too, by bringing packs of pills for anything that may ail me. However, I took them all out of their boxes in order to save room in my luggage, and now I have to wikipedia things like meclozine and pseudoephedrine hydrochloride to make sure I'm taking the correct pills and in the correct dosage).

The first time I got a cold, no one really seemed to care. This time, for some reason, it was different. Maybe because practically everyone in my house got sick at the same time - maybe we should cover our mouths when we cough or sneeze, you say? maybe we shouldn't all tear off pieces of the same loaf of bread with our hands, you say? maybe we shouldn't all stick our grubby fingers in a bowl of salt, you say? maybe we shouldn't use a community water glass, you say? Silly you, that couldn't be it. It must've been because we all walked around without socks or slippers. Or because we showered and then did not completely blowdry every strand of our hair. 

Anyways, I had the beginnings of a cold on Wednesday, and on Thursday I got up and felt like crap. I went down to breakfast with a scratchy voice and a runny nose, and my host mom said "Why don't you stay home today?"

I did the obligatory, "Oh, no, I shouldn't," in a tone that truly lacked conviction.

She asked how many classes I had and I said 2. She goes "Pshh, just stay home then!"

So I did. I went back upstairs, got in bed and dozed until about noon. Then I came downstairs where there was a nice toasty fire in the stove and alternated between watching staged German reality shows on TV when the electricity was on, and Amelie on my laptop when it went out. 

In the afternoon, I went to take a shower, because I was gross and smelly. I went in the kitchen to turn the hot water on, and my host mom said "What are you doing? You can't take a shower when you're sick!" 

I pointed at my hair and made a disgusted face. If you know international sign language, you understand that this means "But my hair is disgusting."

She would have none of it, and told me I could shower at night before I went to bed. This made no sense, since if I showered earlier I would have time to warm up in the living room by the fire, whereas, if I showered before bed, I would be damp and shivering in my quite cold room. However, since I am incapable of arguing this point in Georgian or international sign language, I just nodded assent.

A little later, my host mom told me I was red and looked like I had a fever. I'm pretty sure I did, since I had been having sweats and chills for hours, but when she tried to get me to take my temperature I absolutely refused. It must have seemed really weird to them. What's the harm in taking your temperature? But as much as they tried to get me to, I resisted. The truth is, walking bag of germs that I was at the time, I was a little afraid of what microscopic creatures were lurking on that thermometer. First of all, I didn't trust that they would have washed after whoever had used it last, and secondly, I had seen my sister drop it on the floor a half hour earlier and was pretty sure it hadn't left the room to be washed in the meantime. In addition, if I did have a fever, I didn't want them trying to force unknown medications on me on top of the unknown medications (didn't have internet access so couldn't wikipedia them) I had already taken. 

Evening came and my host mother informed me that I was no longer allowed to shower at night. She had decided, "You can skip school tomorrow, and then it's the weekend and you won't have to shower until Sunday night, and then Monday you can go to school."

This was a horrifying prospect. That would make it six days without a shower. In Georgia, where company just pops in unexpected, and where I, as the foreigner, am judged a little more harshly than most for my dress and appearance. Maybe harshly isn't a good word, but what I'm wearing and how I look is definitely noticed more than the locals. I can tell every morning when I walk in the teacher's room and all eyes turn to me and scan me up and down. 

Also, the thought of missing another day of school was not appealing. Not because I feel I have a huge responsibility to be there, that the kids will be lost without me, that the class will be a failure without my native English voice reading dialogues between Mr. Jolly, Dan, and Lily about King Tub's competition on Saturday. I didn't want to miss it because my phone was out of money, which means I couldn't call or text and I knew that if they didn't let me out of the house for school, they wouldn't let me walk to the store to put more money on it. Plus, the internet at our house wasn't working and I really needed to steal some of the school's wifi to look up some stuff and get some things in order for Korea. So four days in my house with no phone and no internet meant no connection to the outside world and I just didn't think I could handle it. And the no showering thing on top of it would just push me to the breaking point. 

So I did what a good host daughter does and went along with it while secretly planning to get up in the middle of the night and creep downstairs for a shower, and to slip out of the house the next day unseen and disguised as an elderly Georgian to fill up my phone at the store without the neighbors reporting that they'd seen me out and about.

But the next morning I took a much simpler route. I got up to go to the bathroom, and my host mother was there burning the dirty toilet paper (this is the part where you say to yourself "Wow, I'm so lucky to have a toilet where I can just flush my toilet paper, instead of a hole in the ground where the toilet paper has to be collected in a trash can and burned so the hole doesn't fill up too fast." - or, if you have the latter, it's the part where you say "That reminds me, I forgot to go burn the toilet paper this morning. It's getting a little full.")

Anyways, I took this opportunity to say "I feel good now. I can go to school." And then I added a thumbs up, because that's something that I do a lot now. 

My mom agreed but when I went to take a shower she again told me I couldn't, because then I would be cold on the way to school. I said, in Georgian, "I can't go to school...." and then in international sign language, "...because my hair is disgusting!" I don't know if it was the look of alarm on my face at the thought of going out in public in the nasty state that I was in, or if she actually took a good look at my hair and realized how disgusting it really was, but she let me take a shower. 

And so as I write this, my hair is clean, my phone is loaded with 3 lari and 90 tetri, and my pocket is full of a pack of kleenexes I picked up at the store so that I don't have to keep blowing my nose with napkins. I also got a good amount of internet time in during my free period at school, luckily before the electricity went out. 

And so, all is well in the world. 

And now I'd like to take a moment to rant about my host dad, who was also sick. But in addition to fever, congestion, and sore throat, his cold turned him into a giant crying baby. There was a youtube video a while back that I saw about what I think they called the "man cold" if I remember right - basically saying that when men get a cold they act as if they're an inch from death, in grueling agony, in great suffering under the grips of this terrible virus. My host dad was the epitome of this. Staggering around the house as if, with each step someone was twisting a knife deep into his gut. Literally, at least once an hour he would turn to me with a pained expression and say "Jame! How are you?" 

"Eh...so-so."

"Me, I'm terrible. Does your throat hurt?"

"Eh, kind of."

"My throat hurts a lot. Does your head hurt?"

"Eh....yeah, kind of."

"Mine hurts so bad. Do you have a fever?"

"I don't know."

"I'm burning up!"

I am really not kidding when I say this happened at least once an hour. My host dad is the king of repetition. Nothing ever gets old to him. Every time I get done with a meal he says "Jame! Eat!" and I say that I don't want to and he says "Jame!" and then gradually sticks out his arms to the side like a person who is getting fat. He thinks this is hilarious. Still. He does this every day, at least once, but usually 3 times. And he laughs every time. And I try to at least give a chuckle but it's getting harder and harder. 

When my host dad would cough, it wasn't just a cough, it was an entire production. A performance that would put Russell Crowe in Gladiator to shame, that would make Halle Berry hand over her Oscar. If you heard it, it would make you scan the floor to see if his lung was laying there. 

His 65 year old mother, I might add, was also afflicted, and when she had a fit of coughing, it was definitely real, and I definitely was concerned a few times that she might have popped a few capillaries or something. However, she was still expected to cook, clear the table for everyone, and go about her daily household business as usual. Because she just had a cold. Not a man cold.