Sharing: In Sickness And In Health

I just love the generosity of other people, especially when they have something to share that you don’t really want, but have no way of refusing. By this I don’t mean that third toaster at a wedding, or the reindeer pullover Aunt Maud knitted for your twentieth birthday which fits one arm but not the other and makes Rudolf look like a drunken sot rather than red-nosed.

We had one this week: a case of unwanted sharing with all and sundry. He sat in the middle of the lecture hall, surrounded, as the hour went on, by an increasing pile of used paper tissues, coughing, spluttering and generally disturbing everyone else with sneezes and wheezes and sprays of something I do not wish to either describe nor think about. Such generosity should go rewarded, but it is unlikely in this case. I pity those who sat near him, at the beginning of the lecture, and can well understand those same people who, as the talk continued, gathered their few belongings together and moved far, far away.

Photo Credit: pouchin – Creative Commons

Although, I suspect, by then it was too late. I do not doubt we will have a few more people sniffling into their work towards the weekend, having caught the bug so freely passed on.

I’m inclined to say that the lecture was not so important, he could have missed it without any problems, if he had been someone else. The thing is, he’s missed other lectures, in good health, for whatever reason, but chose to come to this one carrying the bug which could lay all low. Added to which, I doubt that he caught much of what was said anyway, with all the noise he was making.

Hopefully I was far enough away from me, I tend to sit towards the front in the hope of catching some extra inspiration, some nuance which can’t be seen from the cheap seats. How far and how quickly can these bugs travel? At least I now know why so many Japanese people wear masks wherever they go, even when they’re not in Tokyo trying to find an oxygen machine.

Love & Kisses, Viki.

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