Bring in The Funk

We try to be a sharing family. I now see this is a mistake.

I came to this conclusion around 10 p.m. Saturday night, curled up my bathroom floor, shivering and sweating at the same time, whimpering to my wife, "make...it...go...away..."

Yes, we have been passing around The Funk in my house, and I think the best way to stop the spread is to demolish the house and rebuild, possibly out of wood that has been soaked in Purel.

It started last week. My wife told me she wasn't feeling so great. I offered up this sage medical advice: Something must be going around. She countered that she works in a school, which is essentially the genesis of every funk on the planet, so something is always going around. For someone who works around kids to get sick, something extra special has to take hold.

I assured her she would be on the mend in no time. A short while later, I was being pushed aside, Heisman-like, as she sprinted to her new best friend, the bathroom, where she would spend the next few days.

Trying to keep the rest of the house blech-free, I did my level best to tend to kids without my wife having to leave the comfort of the bathroom mat. That evening, however, I found my daughter had contracted The Funk.

She came to me about 3 in the morning and said, "Daddy, by tummy hurts. And it's moving up to my chest..."

Immediately, I knew where the next move was, and I escorted her to the bathroom ("Step over your mother, sweetie...") and spent the rest of the evening holding her hair as she tried to turn herself inside out.

The next day was a hole-up-in-bed day for those two, while Parker and I continued our quest for continued health. We also shopped for bubbles.

By Saturday, my wife and Allie were both on the mend. That evening, however, I had the sneaking suspicion that The Funk had taken up residence in me. I base this on the fact that, every few minutes, my stomach would make a gurgling noise. It sounded as though I had a coffee pot inside of me brewing. And, in some ways, it felt like I had a coffee pot inside of me. A very pointy coffee pot.

By about 10 that evening, I had assumed my wife's well-worn spot on the bathroom floor. Oftentimes, my wife and I have epic struggles of competitive sicknesses. I will have, say, a backache, and will tell her it is more extreme than any pain she will ever know. She will point to our two children. I tell her that she gave birth with the benefit of epidurals, doctors, etc. I, meanwhile, have to endure on sheer toughness alone.

But this time was different. My wife, having gone through the same thing just days before, had gobs of sympathy for me. I think we can agree that true love is patting someone gently on the back as they uncontrollably heave and then whispering softly to them, "Hang on...there's some in your hair."

I spent the next 13 or so hours in a quasi-coherent stage. I would nibble on a cracker, sip some ginger ale, sleep a little and, I am told, babble quite a bit. At one point, my wife said I stood up in the middle of the bedroom and had this conversation:

ME: HURRY! HURRY!

HER: What!?!?!?

ME: Skribble rabble garble. Zzzzzzzzz.

By the next evening, I was able to eat something, and was pretty much feeling better. I had the day-after blahs, which are never fun. My wife is an unfortunate carrier of the migraine gene, and coming in a close-second in discomfort to migraines is the day after, which she calls the migraine hangover. Having never experienced a migraine, I am glad I don't know what that day after feels like. But I did have what can be described as The Funk hangover. I felt as though I had entered a sit-up contest, and later served as a pi & ntilde;ata at Albert Pujols' birthday party.

Hopefully, The Funk has made its rounds and has moved on. While I don't wish it on others, I do wish it out of my house. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to work. The wood is done soaking.