Then everyone will feel a little more
sympathy for your suffering. “Do you
have a fever?” they ask.
“Well, no.
Not really,” you say. “I’ve got a
sore throat and a runny nose... But I
might come down with a fever at any moment!”
This is a natural human reaction. It’s not nice to have a sore throat or runny
nose. You can’t sleep well at night. Every bin in the house becomes nothing but a soggy
pile of used tissues. But people who
only catch a cold once or twice a year quickly forget how bad your suffering is. So it is necessary to exaggerate a
little in order to get the sympathy and moral support which will help you
recover.
I now have a sore throat. It seems very much like the beginning of a
cold. I should be exaggerating my
symptoms and getting people to say, “There there. You poor thing. Hang in there,” or “Let me cook dinner. You had better rest up in bed.”
But I’m too embarrassed to do it
again. This is my fourth cold in a
row. I have had nothing but one cold
after another since about February. So
instead I try to hide my coughs from friends and students. Rather than exaggerating I find myself playing
the symptoms down. “Sorry. I think my hayfever is causing me problems
again,” I say as I try to breathe after a long cough.
And anyway, my wife and baby son are both
coughing too. They deserve at least as
much sympathy as I do. The bins in our
house are going to stay soggy for a while yet.
Vocabulary:
“a touch of (the flu)” - a casual phrase,
meaning that you have (the flu), but just a little bit
a bug – a casual expression for a virus
to come down with (a fever) – to contract (a
fever); to get (a fever)
soggy – of an item such as a tissue or
piece of paper, to be so full of water or liquid that it loses its shape
to exaggerate – to make something seem
bigger, more important, worse etc. than it really is
in a row - consecutively
to play (something) down – to make (something)
seem smaller, less important, less bad etc. than it really is
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