The Woody Creeker

published at Owl Farm when you least expect it.

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MEDICINE CUP TO TOAST

by

BY TOM MILLER

Hi, my name is Tom Miller, and I live in Eastern Iowa on the banks of the Mississippi River. I was thankfully forced into retirement last year due to the pandemic and haven’t looked back since. I was never able find the job that made work seem like fun, but I always worked hard and was good at what I did. The end of the day or the weekend could never come soon enough, and the toil was always about the money and what it could provide. With my newly found free time I have been able to get back to taking a crack at writing but as with most anything, the skills fade and rust without keeping at it consistently, so take this piece with that grain of salt.

As one adapted to taking a gamble and losing, I suckered myself into believing the idea of taking time off from work on a whim and with no plan might be a fine, invigorating idea. On the first waking minute of the first morning of the first day, I lay prone in my bed, paralyzed with an enigmatic and menacing awareness of doom or dismay to come. It was nearly the same sense as when I saw that old ugly and blind dog at the pound with one day left to be adopted. Almost the same as hearing church bells toll at an odd hour, and your gut instinct is there is some religious observance you aren’t aware of, but at the same time, something unsettling gnaws from another place inside of you. Inside of me? The onset of illness? Fifteen years without calling in sick for work, and I play an impulse to take a leave only to fall prey to microorganisms that some inconsiderate ass has left laying about?

   I’ll be damned I’m coming down with something. Irritation of the throat along with an uncomfortable searing in the chest. And it escalated. Oh, I don’t fall ill often and when it does happen I don’t suffer it well.  Amidst my misery, I am scolded for being an unreasonable patient, and sympathy, I am reminded, is reserved for the deserving. I whimper and whine like a child and call out for nighttime cold medicine in the morning and for more of it an hour later. The potion is labeled to be administered at bedtime, but my rhythmic clock has been in disarray since my decadent youth, so I take my medicine at whatever time my unrepentant psyche cries for it. And when it doesn’t perform as I thought it should, I accuse do-gooders of conspiring to dilute the formula to placate wealthy and influential Oprah watchers.

   Yes, the medicine does do something, though it is vague and mysterious in its effects. I am always aware of my epic plight and attendant suffering, but yet curiously dismissive of them at the same time. I turned to the unfamiliar comfort of daytime television and found I most enjoy the Jerry Springer show in my ailing blankness. Springer is a work of art for the masses, scorned but always managing an attraction. A friend to the woozy infirm and offering up a respite from having to overthink. A man worthy of hoisting a brimming medicine cup to toast.