I felt sick. It was days before the semester started and I was knee-deep in teacher meetings. My head pounded, lethargy crawling all over me. One morning, I leaned my head back to rest my eyes for just a moment. I fell asleep and had one of those free-falling dreams that jolted me back upright, flailing my arms as if directing an off-key symphony. I felt awful.
School started. A mom called to ask advice about her son just diagnosed with mono. He was going to be out for a while.
"You say he felt it coming on but you didn't know what it was?" I asked.
"That's right. I felt guilty once I had him diagnosed."
"Mind if I ask what his symptoms were?"
"Really tired. Headache but only occasional fever. Cough. He just didn't feel right."
I hung up the phone. And coughed. Great. I have mono. I have the exact same symptoms but I can't miss work. What if I'm out for weeks? Months? I'm not giving in, I told myself. I'm not going to miss work.
My symptoms worsened one day and then miraculously improved the next. One day I'd be on my death bed, the next I'd feel like running a marathon. Is mono a fickle illness?
On one of the good days, I traveled to Fayetteville with my family. I made the drive in a car that beeps when the driver changes lanes without a signal and, once cruise control is on, the eyesight gizmo keeps the car at my desired speed and slows it down when it locks on to a car in front. I could almost read a book while driving since the car alerts me when I'm leaving a lane and slows down when a car in front brakes.
I smirked. That's what we've come to. We are now a world that needs the car to drive on its own, to take action so we can be more passive. What next? It's not difficult to make a list of long-gones. We no longer have road maps. We no longer have phone books. We no longer have mix tapes, for crying out loud. Do we mail letters anymore? Clip articles from newspapers? We've become a planet of idiots. We no longer trust ourselves to do anything. Is automation killing inspiration?
I woke up refreshed in Fayetteville and laced my shoes for a run on the Razorback Greenway. What a beautiful path. I jogged along the rolling fields, the ancient train bridges, and the smooth surface the greenway provided. I ran parallel to Leverett Avenue from the north as I headed for downtown. Apartment complexes gave way to parks, then to more open fields. The Razorback Cross Country complex butts up against the Greenway and some shirtless 95-pounder cruised by, ignoring me as he easily passed.
Natural beauty surrounded me, as did dozens of runners and bike riders. Then I saw it. In a bright yellow triangle were the words "Trail Unsafe When Under Water."
We now have to warn people that when the trail floods, it may be unsafe to run on it? If the path you're on is literally under water, it might not be safe? There it is yet again, right in my face. Surely we have not become so mindless, so out of tune with our ability to determine right from wrong that we need a sign stating in large black letters on yellow background that maybe, just maybe, if the trail is under water, you should know that your run will be disrupted.
Idiots, I mumbled to myself.
I continued my run, thinking about the overbearing desire to idiot-proof this world. I heard the beeping sound my car made when it wandered out of its lane. I felt the slowing momentum when an invisible foot applied the brake when the cruise control was on. I drove an idiot car to Fayetteville and ran past an idiot sign, directing me to stay off an underwater trail.
What happened? When did we become so afraid of figuring things out and trusting ourselves to do right? When did we abandon the simplest of tasks? Are we afraid that without direction, without assistance, we can't do it?
I returned home from Fayetteville and ate dinner with my family. Our family rule is that whoever is up last gets the coffee pot ready for the next day. So, before retiring for the night, I made the coffee. I quietly whispered a prayer for the next day, hoping it would be one of the good ones, one in which I felt like running a marathon instead of taking a mono-induced nap.
I held aloft the almost empty coffee bag, the same bag I'd been using the previous week, and a glint of green caught my eye. I fetched some reading glasses. There was a little green label on the bag, screaming at me, mocking me. I put the bag down.
I realized that when my wife made the coffee, she used her favorite, one that's different from mine. When I made it, I used the bag in my hand, the bag I bought on accident--the bag with the little green label identifying it as decaffeinated.
After 30 years of drinking two cups of fully caffeinated coffee each morning, I had accidentally gone cold turkey. I had felt better on days that my wife had made the pot, then fell ill again when it was my turn once more.
I didn't have mono. I just needed to be idiot-proofed.
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Steve Straessle, whose column appears every other Saturday, is the principal of Little Rock Catholic High School for Boys. You can reach him at sstraessle@lrchs.org.
Editorial on 02/22/2020