Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Nostalgia For Freezing

I've got a cold, and I'm really congested. What's peculiar is this: at odd moments, it gives me flashbacks to boot camp.

Maybe that takes some explanation. Boot camp is a kind of accidental paradise for germs: you bring people from all over the country (i.e. with all their regional germs) to one central location, where they live together in an enclosed space under high-stress conditions that lower their immune systems. The result is a little-mentioned fact of life about boot camp: you're always sick. Everyone is sick. It's just one more unhappy detail.

So being severely congested keeps giving me vivid little reminders of boot camp: what particular buildings looked like, what the food tasted like, how cold Chicago can get in the winter.

(That last is particularly funny, since it's murderously hot right now, and those memories are paradoxically refreshing. Ahh, trying to get to sleep in a room whose open windows allow the snow to come in!)

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