Son 2 and I were talking last night over dinner, and somehow the conversation turned to hangovers. (Don't ask me why.) Son 2 wondered if I had ever had a hangover and I admitted that yes, well, over the years I've had a few ... not a lot but a few. Son 2 started to say that he was never, ever going to have a hangover, and then qualified it by saying that maybe in college he would. (He is 11 years old, so the whole concept is a little theoretical at this point.) I wanted to demystify the subject for him a bit, or at least deromanticize it. So I explained that basically a hangover is just like having a headache at the same time that you feel queasy in your stomach. Nothing special other than that. He said "Oh," with what sounded like a smidgen of surprise and disappointment that it should be something so commonplace.
To emphasize how dull and ordinary this is, I added, "And there's nothing special about a headache or queasiness. Your mom can feel that just by being sick -- you know she gets those symptoms a lot because of her illnesses."
And Son 2 lobbed back, "Mom can feel that just by seeing HAPPINESS."
Metaphysics of job-holding
1 day ago
2 comments:
Wife gets sick from watching other people happy?
Poor wifey.
Well, in retrospect, Son 2 may not have meant it the way it came out. Maybe he meant something a lot more innocuous like "Mom's illnesses give her these symptoms so frequently that even something which is (in itself) completely harmless or benign can be an inadvertent trigger. Isn't it sad that she suffers so much from her illnesses?"
But the way he actually said it is brilliant, and sums up in eight words a lifetime of bitterness, suffering, chronic victimhood, self-pity, and envy. Wow.
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