I’m finally starting to feel better.

For four days, I’ve suffered through a brutal sore throat, probably obtained from one of my students. My esophagas felt like it had been raped by dolphins. My throat was red, raw, and ravaged. My head felt as if every cavity in my substantial skull was brimming with chunky mucous, or perhaps a fruit cocktail of some sort. Given the texture of whatever substance I was sneezing up, I cannot be certain of it’s origins, but I can’t rule out demonic influence. My head throbbed in pain. My body ached, as if I had been pummelled by a gang of rock-wielding, low-income gnomes in my sleep.

To make matters worse, my girlfriend managed to mock me in my fiercest moment of pain. We were having pizza to relax and take my mind off the pain when it happened. I picked up a slice of fresh, piping-hot pepperoni pizza and delivered it through my anxious, salivating lips when I felt the pain begin. The skin on the roof of my mouth melted away like bloody wax, as the entire flap of cheese and meat from my slice proceeded to slip off the crust and flop onto my lip and chin. I bobbed my head forward in panic, moaning as I felt my lower lip burn. I tried to bite away the flaming cheese flap, but I was unable to. In my mind’s beleaguered state, I did not think to release the flaming cheese flap from my mouth and onto my plate until too late. Meanwhile, Bridgette was giggling hysterically. In hindsight, I can see the humor in watching a groaning, uncoordinated man flail in agony as his lips and mouth are destroyed by searing cheese, but I didn’t manage to see it at that moment as it was happening to me.

I spent the rest my night with an ice cube on my puffed, red lip and a bruised ego. It was the most unpleasant day of my life. It was literally worse than being cooked alive.

Stop laughing at me.