Reset

Being sick <----------------------------------------> Being American

At the back of the typical home router (the box thing that seems to distribute the internet throughout your home), there is this tiny little hole. It is so small barely a paperclip can poke through. This is probably the point, so that only the point of a tiny paperclip or pin, as a tool, can fit through and work its magic.

Which is to essentially “reset” the router. To reactivate the device so that it comes back alive in a completely refreshed mode, or mood. Refreshed to the brink of its creation – the username thing and password are reset to the “original factory settings.” (The benefit being that if a configuration gets messy and mucked up so bad, that you can simply reset it.)

Being sick, should be like that. Ya get sick and take a couple days off, reset yourself.

Individually we need to get reset every now and then. Like when my phone says, “hey big fella, you need to shut me down, or restart me, so that I can get and set the latest software into my system,” so that it doesn’t get caught with some virus or malicious mucus.  You should have that right as well, despite what your employer and their efficiency quota says. The guilt we in America seem to feel about getting sick is enough to make us sick. We’re human, we get sick.

It's fairly petty that someone breathed all over ya, or that you wiped some nanosized bacteria into your eye and caught your cold… Whether it comes on fast or slow, whether it peaks high or low, and whether it descends and moves on peacefully or not, you have been served. So take care of yourself and get reset. Don’t trudge through and be a man and spread whatever ails ya to the rest of the workforce, or schoolforce.

As a whole, it seems that being sick and spreading the sickness has been a benefit to humanity. Survival of the fittest, down with the weak – our people are the most fit remnants of millions of years of sick culture. But, whose benefit is it truly, that we get sick? The germ, or us? If the germs were all gone, would we humans just multiply to every square inch of space upon the planet?

Aren't there World War II stories of the Russian Army, short on rifles, but long on soldiers - sending two fellows out with one rifle and once the lead soldier got shot, the other person would follow and pick up the rifle and carry on? Or as American soldiers took and claimed various islands in the Pacific, a group of guys carrying the American flag up the hill, king of the hill style, bullets whizzing by, just keep following the mates ‘till at least one was left standing at the top, with the flag.

This is where the American workforce seems similar and perhaps this is why we don’t call in sick. We’re too afraid of losing our job because there is some other fellow behind us, licking his chops, ready to take over with the slightest misstep, be him a neighbor down the street or some fresh faced kid. To whose advantage is this... you? your employer? the germ? Don’t get sick, it’s a sign of weakness. Don’t reset, you may catch a breath and come back refreshed and ready to enjoy your work.

And here I am justifying my newfound annual sick event using a router, my phone and WW II veterans (God bless'em).