I started the Free Floating Hostility series a few months ago and only wrote one article.  I blame the shoulder surgery.  Now it’s back, because, well, I am pissed.

For those of you who heard Episode #25 of the podcast, I’ve had a cold for the last few days.  Basically, I am allergic to pollen, so springtime can officially suck it.  Everybody loves spring, all the birds are chirping and the sun is shining and everything is getting warm, but meanwhile, I end up with infected sinuses and general malaise from what is tantamount to yellow anthrax.  So yes, springtime is not exactly a friend to Kenzans worldwide.  Of course, this time I’ve gotten sick in the midst of a pandemic, so not only am I miserable from hacking up approximately one-quarter of the contents of my right lung, but now I get to deal with jokes about the swine flu.  Goody for me!

I normally arm myself with Claritin and Sudafed and I’m okay, but this particular cold has been pesky.  I live right behind a pharmacy, so I figure that perhaps now is the time to break out the BIG FUCKIN’ Q!  That’s right, DayQuil and NyQuil’s one-two punch of disease destruction.  It tastes like hell but feels so awesome.  So I drive up to the pharmacy, except that I forgot about one very major problem… it’s 1:00pm and I live in what should really be considered a retirement community.  So the place is swarming with old people.  I don’t normally mind old people, but when they are sick (which is often), then it means they become selfish and mean-spirited zombies, clutching desperately to their carts as much as they cling to life itself.

So I’m trying to find which version of NyQuil is the best one for me.  When the hell did NyQuil suddenly become Robotussin with all the variants, by the way?  There’s about seven billion different ones; I just need one that will knock me out so when I wake up, I’m not coughing up something resembles the mutagen from TMNT.  In the process, it’s like Cirque du Ben-Gay in the aisles, as septugenarians peruse the aisles looking for deals and making anyone under the age of 55 miserable by ramming their unnecessary carts into the ankles of the free-walking.  I really need to start taping up my ankles or something when I go to these places.

The best part is whenever one of them rams you with their cart and then starts yelling at you for being in their way, as if you should break your intense study from whether or not NyQuil Squirrel Fever will help you any more than NyQuil Leprosy & Sinus to get out of the way of some 86-year-old wrinkled battleaxe who needs a full-sized cart for the bag of cough drops and the denture cream they need.  Then, they start to yammer on about how disrespectful the youth of America are for not showing proper respect and why in my day you’d be stoned to death for what you just did.  They are prone to hyperbole.

So I get my NyQuil and I head to the front.  In almost every pharmacy I’ve been to, there are six checkouts, and only one is open.  Usually the cashier is doing some form of interpretive dance near the Reese’s cups and you have to get their attention by shouting loudly about the state of disarray they left the gossip racks in so they can check you out.  Then, as they check you out, heaven help you if you didn’t bring cash because their point of sale machines usually take four swipes of the card, plus a manual input of the card number, plus a re-input because the cashier left out three random numbers and instead replaced them all with the letter N (for "number", obviously).

Finally, I pay for my goods, sign their little digital pinpad that always makes your signature look like someone ate an Etch-a-Sketch and vomited into the circuitry, then ran for my life, or really moved as quickly as possible due to the labored breathing thanks to the pollen.  On the way out of the parking lot, I was sure to dodge the random parts that have fallen off of the Buicks that were in a state of disrepair, as well as any small animals that may have chewed their way out of said Buicks.  Then, when I got home, I swore I’d never return to the pharmacy again.

At least, until next spring.

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