Ian Snelling of Hillcrest has sent me a message headed Man flu – scientific facts. Wives should take note: man-flu is more painful than childbirth, according to a survey of over 100 000 men. In 1982 scientists simulated the agonising symptoms of full blown man-flu in a female chimp. She became so ill that her head fell off.
Man-flu is not “just a cold”. It is a condition so severe that the germs from a single sneeze can decimate a neighbourhood.
Women don’t get it. At worst they suffer from “sniffles” which, if a man caught, he would still be able to run, play golf and tear a phone book in half.
Full recovery from man-flu would take place much quicker if their simple requests for care, sympathy and regular beverages were met.
Is that really so much to ask? Florence Nightingale would have done it.
I could relate to Ian’s message. Right now you can phone just about anybody and say: “Excude by voice but I hab a dreadful code in de dose.” And they say: “Wab do you bean, YOU hab a code? You shoub see BY bloody code!”
The difference between flu and a cold is that a cold lasts a fortnight but flu lasts a full two weeks.
But flu or cold, all a man really needs is a sympathetic word, otherwise the whole point of having a cold becomes ridiculous. You can take aspirins, eat honey by the jar, swallow six hot toddies, but nothing is as comforting as somebody saying: “Gosh, you should be in bed!”
Psychologists support Ian Snelling’s view. A recent report said (and I am not kidding) that when a man gets a cold he suffers much more than a woman.
Psychologically, it said, a man needs more sympathy because a woman cannot admit, even to herself, that she is incapacitated by a bad cold.
This, apparently, is because, no matter what, she has to get the kids up and do the house and, maybe, she has an outside job and then she has to come home and cook the meal.
She is biologically programmed not to seek sympathy.
Women are so lucky.
Even as I write I am under enormous strain (I’ll hab you doe) – sweating and coughing like ednything. I have a painful cold sore on my upper lip; my head aches and my eyes are like burning coals. But do I feel sorry for myself?
You bet I do.
Just by poking my head out from under the bed covers would be a threat to public health.
I had agreed to give a talk one evening to a society for the physically handicapped so I rang the convener to ask if they had a standby speaker. I could sense she was aghast. People were coming from as far away as the next room to hear me speak.
My wife was hissing (in that way women have when interrupting you on the phone): “How can you ring them – of all people – and tell them you’re not feeling well?”
The convener conceded: “Gosh, you should be in bed!”
It was all I needed.
When I got there with my red, raw eyes and cold sore, I found the convener was blind so my condition went unnoticed and I thought of describing them to her but this would have knocked a lot of the pathos out of the situation.
In any event, when I saw my audience I stopped feeling sorry for myself – at least until I got home.
没有评论:
发表评论