The doctor is in.

I went to the Minute Clinic today, and waited for an hour to see the physician. I read nearly all the men's health magazines on their newsstand, and my abs are still not rock-hard.

Being sick is challenging, not for the fevers, but because I get network television. Yesterday morning I spent two hours watching Cheers reruns on 45, drinking coffee, and calling coworkers to remind them that they were at work. One of them told me I probably have AIDS. I hope his next performance review ends in tears.

I can't drink the cough syrup, even when it's on pancakes. Shit, I can barely stomach the dark green, bruise-colored pills. I had two of them before bed last night, and an hour after falling asleep, sat bolt-upright in bed, looked at Sarah, and decisively told her that, if she wanted to watch more Sponge Bob, she should get the pillows from the couch. I'll blame that gibberish on fever.

The lady doc at the Minute Clinic shoved a cotton swab the size of a mature sheep down my throat. She wore a surgical mask, and between that and the bio hazard sticker on the fridge behind her, I started to imagine my diagnosis being really gruesome and impressive.

"George, you have a rare form of flu that originates between the moistened toes of arthritic Sheep Dogs from Candy Land. It will partially paralyze your left side, and will cause you to burst into spontaneous tap-dancing, but only when around leftist political pundits." Five minutes later, her test was complete: I do not have strep throat.

I've never owned a scale, but I've always liked being weighed. It's so official, the ritualistic removal of the shoes, the embarrassment of having holes in socks, and how novel having your height recorded along with the weight, in the special chart that's been compiled on me since birth. The good news: I'm not shrinking, neither vertically nor otherwise. I weigh 179 lbs. I didn't ask her how much I weighed, last year. They should start measuring the hardness of my abs.

Thing is, there's always this strange, unshakable karmic accompaniment to my illnesses, like I have to atone for bad behavior. My throat isn't sore because I've been singing along to AC/DC songs, but because I didn't pick my underwear off the bathroom floor when I was seven. That headache I have? That's not from dehydration, it's from clicking 'yes' on the website that asked if I was eighteen, when my birth certificate said otherwise. I have no idea where the blood on my ankles came from.

If I recover, I'll write more about it.