The Cough

It was an extraordinary, virile, rich cough.

I was seated, quietly eating my hotcakes, drinking my coffee and reading my Herald when a tall young man of considerable heft started to lower his huge body into the booth opposite me. As he did so, he coughed a great cough.

It was a gargantuan cough, a CMD (Cough of Mass Destruction). At first I didn't notice it, but it rolled towards me in slow motion like the boulder rolling after Indiana Jones. For several seconds I could hear it rumbling in my direction like an invisible cabbage, leaving in its wake swirls of air that eddied out and around the family restaurant. And it hit me fair square in the face like a large-calibre dum-dum bullet.

It was a Jerry Seinfeld situation. As I cringed and tried to send the giant an askance glance (unsuccessfully, for he refused to look up), I could feel the bacterial toxins getting a toehold in my lungs.

A week later (yesterday) I found myself with sinusitis, laryngitis, tonsillitis and the worst bronchitis I have had in my life. I'm not kidding.

I don't think anybody over the age of 8 has ever coughed in my face before. And I hope it never happens again.

Postscript: Two days after the Giant Cough, I was seated in the same booth eating hotcakes and drinking coffee, when the person in the booth behind me sent a Temple of Doom boulder-cough into the back of my head, ruffling my hair and raising my ire. Is this a new craze or something?

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by Pip Wilson author of my favorite newletter, Blogmanac.