Being sick used to be fun. It used to be my excuse for not taking a shower, lying on the sofa all day under a mess of blankets, watching bad TV, drinking warm ginger ale, nibbling Saltines, and having free reign to act like a big baby. It was even somehow reassuring to have my mom hovering from time to time, testing me for fever, first with her lips and then with the thermometer. (Please. It was oral.) Being sick, best of all, meant no school.

So, I’ve been feeling quite ill ever since Friday afternoon. On Friday afternoon I had lunch at an Indian buffet. So, using my brilliant powers of deduction, I’ve concluded that the cause of my malaise was the Indian food. Add to this the fact that the mere thought of the words “Indian food” causes my stomach to contract threateningly, and there you have it. In fact, just the typing of those two words is doing the strangest things to my entire digestive system.

Now I have no school. I have no work. No obligations. No “have to”s. So now being sick isn’t quite as much fun. In fact, it’s a pain in the ass. (Or, more accurately, a pain in the stomach, a pain in the head, and a pain in the hair. Yes, even my hair hurts. And my skin — she tingles!) Now I am free to do whatever the hell I want to do any day I want to do it. So now when I can treat a Sunday night like a Wednesday night, when each day is almost indistinguishable from the next (except for the TV schedule, which serves to keep the days in some sort of order — I mean, I know it’s gotta be the weekend when there’s no “Maury”), when there is no “school night” or “work night” and every night is just a NIGHT night, being sick just isn’t fun anymore. It’s not fun because it’s not getting me out of anything. What good is lying around on the sofa in my cute little pajama bottoms and fresh little T-shirt, snuggled under a blanket, drinking Crystal Light like the elixir it is, when I can do it any time I want now? What good is acting like a baby when I can do it any day I please?

Why is it, then, that I keep torturing myself by occasionally murmuring (silently) the stomach-wrenching, intestine-clenching mantra Indianfoodindianfoodindianfoodindianfoodindianfood? It’s the same sort of self-torture I perform when I have a toothache and encourage my tongue to taunt the achy tooth until that metallic-feeling “twang” jolts my entire head into some sort of submission.

I must be sick!