The Gift of Covid

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I was woe was me when when I'm getting old,

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you know.

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Hello. So

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it's last Friday, and

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I start to feel, you know, a little like, am

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I am I getting sick? I don't know. But, you know, the nose

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is a little runny. Yeah. I got I don't wanna get sick

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because Saturday

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is Christmas for me, or in this case, last Saturday

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because my brother goes out of town. And so I try to

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get we try to get everyone together, which is hard now because my

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great nieces and nephew are teenagers.

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At least he yeah. I I would say 2 out of 3 at this point.

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And so we know it's just a matter of time until it's like, oh, do

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I have to go? You know, that's gonna be there. And

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regardless, right, you only have so many Christmases when they're little.

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And I know 16 isn't little, especially when he's like, he's gonna

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be taller than me probably this coming year. So I was looking

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forward to it, but it's Friday before that, and I start to get

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the sniffles. And I'm like, oh, that's weird because I don't really get

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sick a whole lot. And so I start popping vitamins

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and drinking, what are airborne, that

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kind of stuff. And I wake up on Saturday,

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and my eyes are really hot. You know what I mean?

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There's just aches everywhere. And I got a

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I got a radio show to do. And so

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I'd slept in, and I had about 45

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minutes until it was time to hit go. And so

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I take a quick shower,

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go through my show, but I'm I'm I'm just not I'm

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not firing on all cylinders, you know, and I'm like, okay. And I

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occasionally had to blow my nose and things like that.

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And it dawns on me about 3 fourths of the way

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through the show that my whole body hurts. And I was

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like, oh, this is not good. Because I'm supposed to

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go to Christmas in about, you know, 2 hours.

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And I'm like, man, I haven't felt this

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bad since. And I was like, oh, since the last time I

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had COVID. Because COVID just everything hurts.

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And I was like, alright. Well, I get done with my show.

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I publish it in record time, and I'm like,

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I've got an hour. And that will give me then I'll have like a half

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hour to get to my brother's house. And I was like, no, right. Somehow I'm

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gonna take a nap. And mysteriously,

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miraculously, I should better say, I'm gonna beat this thing

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and be able to do Christmas because if you've ever seen

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any Christmas, you know, special, it's

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always like, yay, Christmas is coming. What? Oh,

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no. And then the next one is like, do you think that'll work? And

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then it's always Merry Christmas to all and to all good night. And so

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I am in the do you think that will work phase? Do you think, you

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know, a half hour nap will make me completely well?

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I don't know. But we got to try to save Christmas. Well, it works on

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TV, but it didn't work on me. And so I call my brother and

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I'm like, dude, I am I am not well. I go, I'm

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probably gonna go get a COVID test, but I got presents for

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the kids. Yada, yada, yada. Go take my

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test. Yeah. Not in you know how sometimes on the COVID test,

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you're kind of like, well, if I look at it in the light, I might

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have cope no, this was like you have COVID. And I was like,

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okay. So we we did a thing where we more or

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less exchange things on the front porch outside,

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had a mask on, you know, the whole 9 yards.

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And on the way home, man, I was like, man, like, I've

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been looking forward to Christmas all month, and

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I just missed it. And so they gave me

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cookies, of course, you know, and my great nieces and nephews bought me

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some things. So that was cool. But I was like,

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and it was kind of a weird ending because I just had a friend of

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mine that popped in out of town, kind of out of

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nowhere. He's my best friend, kind of a surprise visit

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wasn't planned, but we got to hang out a little bit. And look,

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we're both 59. And we're kind of doing the old

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you remember when this was, you know, and this doesn't well, I can't

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we're just complaining about getting old. And I was telling him, like,

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man, I said it's bad enough that my right knee works

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about 90% of the time going up and downstairs. I'm like, but now I

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got tendonitis, better known as tennis elbow. And I'm like,

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my right side of my body is just shutting down. And I'm

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like, I need to get in better shape, but it's hard to get in better

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shape when, you know, you can't get your body up to to get in

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better shape. And they just wah wah wah. Right? Now we

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had a great time. We always do. And

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so that then, you know, he leaves. I get sick,

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and and then I miss Christmas. And I was

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really having quite the pity party, especially on

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Saturday. I just Saturday Sunday just felt

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horrible. And I

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saw Jamie Foxx's special on Netflix. Now

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if you're a person does not enjoy cursing,

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it's it's funny, but that man likes to

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drop m f a lot. In fact, his nickname is,

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Jamie m f Fox and, you

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know, but it was funny. There are definitely some parts in it that were funny.

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But I'm stealing this idea from him because

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come Monday and really what is

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today? Thursday. So probably Tuesday.

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I am starting to feel better. And

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it dawned on me then, probably

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yesterday, Wednesday, I was, like, oh,

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instead of having my whole body ache,

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I now can feel my tennis elbow. Like, nothing

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else really hurts except my elbow.

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And I was happy to just have my

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elbow where before I

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was woe was me when when I'm getting old, man.

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You know? And, Jamie Foxx talked

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about this that he said, you know,

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one point, he was getting mad at God. Like, why why is this happening

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to me? The the, the crime doesn't

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fit the punishment. And he said and and God blessed him

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with a with a stroke.

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And that's kinda how I feel. Like, I'm actually happy

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now that I can I can go up and down the steps and

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not everything hurts? My elbow, which is for the record kind

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of getting a little better, and my knee is kind of a little better probably

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because I haven't done anything for a week. But maybe that's

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what I was supposed to do. But I never

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would have thought of COVID as a gift, but

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maybe this was the gift I got for Christmas was the gift of COVID

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because I'm not complaining anymore about my body

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because I'm like, alright. I'm back to the same crappy

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state I was before this whole thing started. And

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maybe now this will give me a little inspiration to,

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maybe skip on the Dairy Queen a little and start to really

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realize that your body is a gift and you

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only got one. Like, I know we all think we

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can go, you know, $6,000,000 man and replace

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everything and inject your fat in your butt and everything else we're doing that

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makes everybody look like a chipmunk. But I'm

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not doing any of that. Can't afford any of that stuff.

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And, I was like, you know what? I think COVID was kind of

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a a gift in a way for me to

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realize it could be a whole lot worse. You know, I always

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say that on this show, it's gonna get better. And in

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some cases, the way it gets better is by not getting any worse.

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And so I just thought I would hop on here and

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go, what did you get for for Christmas? I

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got the gift of COVID, and it was a really, really

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good gift. And so if you're in

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a spot and I realized, man, the holidays are nasty

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on your brain at times. You know, it's a lot of reminiscing, and that's what

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me and my buddy were doing. We had a lot of reminiscing

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and things I had not thought about in a very long time, which made me

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laugh a lot. And and there is

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that's powerful stuff. That's why there's so many things in

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these Christmas movies that make you miss the

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past. You you reminisce about these things and it's, you know,

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pulls on your heartstrings and things like that. And that's very powerful stuff.

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And I made notes. I'm like, hey, anytime you can get somebody thinking

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about if if I could say something like I watched a thing on Amazon.

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It was Christmas, I think, through the decades. It

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was on Amazon Prime, and they had, like, the seventies. They

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had Evel Knievel and the little like, the first

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handheld electronic football game. All these things I grew up

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with, and it just makes you

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remember those things. And that's

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powerful. The one thing was funny yesterday, last

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night, my appetite, unfortunately, has come back. I

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dropped £4 in 3 days. I was like, alright,

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COVID. Maybe I just I'm gonna go around and find somebody who's sick and

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just start licking them. I'm like, I need to drop some weight, but it's coming

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back. And, but I, you know,

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I Googled getting over COVID

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thinking, oh, this could be interesting. But it did say

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one of the things that grandma used to give you was chicken

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noodle soup, and it's actually really good because of the pepper in

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the broth. It opens up your nasal passages. The

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the broth is good on your throat. The chicken is full of protein,

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and they didn't say what the salts for, but nonetheless and so I

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had not and when I say chicken noodle soup, like, I have chicken

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noodle soup in the cupboard, but I found a can of, like,

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red and white Campbell's chicken noodle, like, the kind where

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you dump it in a bowl, fill up the can with water, and dump that

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in, and then you nuke it for 2 and a half minutes. And I don't

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know how old that I should have looked. I don't know how old this

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this chicken noodle soup was because I have thing like

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chunky mange chicken noodles and vegetables with rice and blah blah.

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You know? No. This was just noodles, a half of a, you

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know, a fleck of chicken in there, and a bunch of salt. And

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I was amazed at the smell

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and but mainly the taste. So I'm sitting in my living room

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watching some bad Hallmark movie because those are easy to sleep

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through. And the minute I

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put the spoon to my mouth because I haven't had chicken

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noodle soup in probably

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50 nah. 45 years.

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It's been a long time. It's not really one of my top things, but

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it was one of those things that for me, either my mom

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or my grandma was feeding me. And so there were

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times when I would spend the night at my grandma's house

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and it'd be cold out or something like that. And she'd like, here, here's some

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chicken noodle soup. But the one that really got me

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was as I put that spoon in my mouth, I swear

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as I'm looking down, like, at the

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noodles and stuff in this bowl, I really expected it. When we

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grew up, we had these pink or black bowls

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that used for cereal or whatever. In this case, chicken noodles. And I

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really expected to see that bowl. It's like

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I went there so incredibly strong,

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you know, and I was like, wow. And I just expected, like, almost open up

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my eyes and I would have then flipped to the other side of the

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living room which used to be a sofa. Like, it just I was amazed

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almost like a weird flashback, you know,

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like in movies where somebody does something like, I think I'm remembering something and it's

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like and I was like, wow, that was just

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bizarre because it's like, I know what's going on. It's a chemical

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that somehow stimulating something in the brain and the brain is going down

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a path that it hasn't gone down in a while. But I just remember, like,

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man, I am there. And I could I could see my grandma's fireplace

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and the plastic on the couch, you know, all that stuff

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was weird. So I'm gonna have to get me some more chicken noodle soup whether

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I'm sick or not. It was good. I was like, I should eat more of

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this. But, nonetheless,

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getting a lot of interesting experiences. Right? One of

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the things that ex wife number 2 and I would

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say, we would get ourselves into something, And

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we just look at each and go, this is gonna be a fun adventure.

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And that's just the kind of way we looked at it. One that

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was really interesting, again, kind of this time of year

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was we're on the freeway. We're

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we're coming home, but we're not there yet by any means.

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And her truck did not have a working,

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you know, right where we're going as soon as I say this, it did not

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have a working gas meter. So you never knew how much gas

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was in the car. You kinda kept tracking your brain and stuff like

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that. So we're on the freeway, And we like the

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engine stops and we're like, oh, crap. We know what this means. And

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so luckily, there's nobody in front of me and we were coming right up to

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an exit ramp. And I'm here to tell you I rolled

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down the exit ramp, which luckily was downhill. At the bottom, there

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was a a stop sign, but there wasn't much traffic there. So I get to

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the bottom. There's nobody coming, so I just run the stop sign and

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turn right into a gas station and then

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rolled up and stopped right at the pump.

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And I was like, now that was a fun adventure. That was that was

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definitely different. And so whatever is going

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on in your world around the holiday time, so I'm hoping it's good.

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And, it's good to remember those old memories. Sometimes those are a little

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painful, but it might just be a fun

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adventure. And the gift you wanted may

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not be what you thought, but it might be your

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most treasured gift this year. So hang

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in there. Until next time, it's gonna get better.