empathy for the lactose intolerant

So it seems I've been hanging around the wrong crowd. All my life, 22 years and counting, I've stayed within the same circles -- breathing the same air, drinking from the same cups, sleeping in the same beds -- until it was too late. One day I'm the prototype of humanity, the next I'm a Bronchitis monster.

Hi, my name is Steve W***, I'm sick and this is my story.

It all started about a week ago; I was prancing through virgin cornfields and such, admiring the butterflies and so, broke as a broken pocket, but my health was intact. I was happy. And then someone close to me – I'm not going to name names, partly because I don't know whom and partly because I'm a bigger person – betrayed me with the figurative kiss of mono. In that moment, my life would never be the same for the following two weeks.

It’s hard to recall life before Bronchitis, but before contracting this not-so-common cold, I embodied twenty-something normalcy. I kissed babies, brushed dogs, clipped coupons, you know, normal shit.

And on Jan. 1, I joined the billions in making a resolution, mine a pledge to cut back on caffeine. Don’t get me wrong; my coffee intake never took center stage at family interventions, but I knew my highs no longer were so high and my lows began in the Grand Canyon. I needed a new start.

Parlaying that resolution with my ongoing bid for Mr. Universe, I swapped the coffee for protein-rich milk. I’m not referring to some synthetic kind of milk, just your usual jug of one-percent cow juice. More protein, less caffeine: the balance in my little world had certainly shifted.

But work does not stop for resolutions -- my boss told me that. For background, my job is basically this: I write gold, clean toilets, pick up my boss’ soap bars, slowly scrub his floor, get paid, say thank you and remember to turn off the light.

Although my boss might say otherwise, nothing is harder than finding a dozen ways to spell ‘win’; you wring your mind for 12th-grade synonyms, but going along with the dumb down, you settle on trite ESPNisms, each sponging your soul little by little until it’s as empty and dry as the Grand Canyon. You tire quickly. So do I.

When the computer screen blinks more than I do, it’s time for a real jolt. Instead of coffee, though, I had milk, you know, the stuff mommies lactate when their babes can’t sleep. I don't know what I was thinking. Meanwhile, the wrestling roundup needed about 12 more inches – about 400 words – in 15 minutes and I was just trying not to nod off.

My stomach tightened around the milk -- one quart headed for my single utter, the other shooting a gaseous pinball up my throat -- the upshot being a cough, cute and innocent at the time, but portending something disastrous. One cough led to another, enough coughs led to an episode and enough episodes led to a short-lived CW television series, the perfect medium for viewers in search of schadenfreude behind a quarantine shield of glass.

So I was suddenly sick. And milk, well, didn’t do my body good. I could deal with the illness and the people who kept their distance – that was OK. But days derailed before they started; after all, what was I going to have with my breakfast cereal? Orange juice? I wanted milk dammit, in fact I wanted any form of dairy: cheese, ice cream, yogurt with extra live cultures. Anything.

And in my delirium, the mirror spun to face me and I saw who, what I had become: a transient lactose intolerant. Intolerant of milk as a dog is of vacuums, as a librarian is of kazoos, as a circle is of right angles. While my impotent indigestion puts the white stuff on hold for now, my libido rages on. And so does my fight.

An estimated 70 percent of all adults are lactose intolerant, according to Wiki. And the other 30 is intolerant of any form of compassion, whether it be for those who’ll never taste a Blizzard without upsetting their stomachs or for those who suffer taunts like “Fall in some tar, Bronchosaurus."

So until you spend an half-hour in a waiting room, forced to scribble private information for strangers, to overhear the latest celeb news that you don’t care about, to read outdated Highlights magazines, to suffer strangers who strip you with their eyes, you cannot begin to imagine what life with Bronchitis is like.

Go ahead, wish me well. You’ll still make me sick.