Coughing!

This is my third installment of a series of blogs that have included titles that end with exclamation marks. Each of these entries concern matters of health. Psychoanalyze that as you will, kind reader.

Or don’t.

This week I turn to my September cough.

God Bless me.

***

It’s always been funny to me to tell people “God Bless you!” after they cough. Typically, one says “God Bless you!” after somebody sneezes. At least this has been true in my world. Who am to say what traditions or compulsions guide you in your worlds?

My slight improvisation on this well-worn tradition is to offer a blessing in the aftermath of a cough. I know what you’re thinking. I’m so clever.

It’s best for a writer to never imagine they know what a reader is thinking. The same is true for any other human being in every other human situation. For the most part. No rule works all the time. There is no best practice.

Another slight improvisation on the well-worn tradition of offering blessings is to offer it to one’s self.

“Hack, hack!” I hack.

“God bless me,” I say.

My blessing is met with silence. I’m not as funny as I think. We are rarely as funny as we think and, for me, that is funny.

Humor is strange.

***

“I heard you coughing,” my wife Katie said as we woke up early on a Monday morning. We always wake up early this September because we have children to get to school. Katie’s voice was accusatory. I know my cough interfered with her sleep as much as it did with my own.

I told Katie I could have died in my sleep from coughing. Katie’s facial expression suggested to me that she didn’t agree.

I get sick most Septembers. I am but a humble educator. I go from the sweet bliss that is summer break to the whirlwind that is keeping up with people in schools. Sharing thoughts and sharing germs. Educators are porous beings. Good educators are, anyway.

So I’ll hack away. I think I’m still alive. This blog provides some evidence of that. And I’ll offer blessings to myself and others as I send mucus and germs into the stratosphere.

“God bless you!” I’ll say. “God bless me!”

It never hurts to offer blessings. Our souls are porous and always in need of the divine as we make our way through our worlds, regardless of our traditions, compulsions, or scratchy throats.