Darla McCorkle
So as most of you know I had COVID last week. Quarantine was pretty easy because the medicine the clinic prescribed me made me so sick with side effects I didn’t want to get out of bed anyway.
But it wasn’t the COVID or the side effects that had me in a tailspin. It was Trent Gale and the way he spoke to me during my visit.
Trent: “Did you already go to lab to test for COVID? Oh yeah, you did, here we go. It’s positive.”
Me: “It was not!!”
Trent: “It was. So we’ll get ya some meds called in and let me see if I can find you a code for you to go online and get a coupon because this med is pretty expensive. You just fill out the form and hopefully you’ll qualify to get most if not all that taken care of. You’ll take that for the next 5 days and the antibiotics and steroids and this version seems to be showing a risk of stroke in some patients especially those above a certain age so just to be safe for the next month and take one baby aspirin a day.”
I beg a thousand pardons! A certain age? A stroke?
Old people have strokes, Trent! Did you just call me old people?? If I had felt better I would’ve yelled, “well, so, your hair is thinning!” Instead I walked home riddling if I was the elderly in the statement, “babies and the elderly are at the highest risk.”
I probably could have nursed my ego back to health if that alone had happened this month, but just the weekend before while out with friends another horrible person in my life had the audacity to throw a math word problem into our after dinner conversation.
I was talking to this lovely man that while I know he is younger than me I don’t really put a number to it. He is very well versed and gets most of my pop culture references and such. However, on this particular night the following exchange occurred:
Me: “I saw the first Titanic artifact tour when it opened in Tennessee like in early to mid-90s. I think it was around 1993. Let me think I graduated in 1990. Then left Texas in 93. So yeah it was…”
Him: “I was 2.”
Me in my head: “I beg a thousand pardons. 2? Did he say 2? How was he 2 when I graduated or started college and is sitting in a bar drinking with me? That math doesn’t math.”
Me also in my head: “Wait. That math does in fact math. People born in 2000 are able to sit and drink with me in a bar. They are well over drinking age. Therefore, anyone born in the 1990s is also of legal drinking age. In fact they have mortgages, babies, maybe grandbabies, boats and cars that are paid off and probably life insurance. Weird.”
It felt for a minute like some whacked out math problem. If my friend was 2 when I went to college, how old am I if we are both at a bar on Friday? Do not use a formula that makes you a time traveler. Do not assume he is an alien. Assume his age increases each year. Your age does not double and in fact is advancing one digit per year just like his. How many apples do y’all have total when you reach Chicago? Show your work.
My answer: It’s a trick question. The puzzle can’t be solved. It can’t be solved because I’ve apparently had a stroke.
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