It’s such a cliche that men are babies when they’re sick (which doesn’t mean it’s not true, of course). Well, let me say for the blog record that girls can be babies too.

1982: I’m TOUGH. My first child, Katie, was born at midnight (and I had several hours of pitocin and not one bit of painkiller, no demerol, no Tylenol, nothing). I went home 8 hours later, vacuumed the living room, made a pan of lasagna, and made a birth day cake for Katie. Sure, I kind of felt like all my insides might fall out on the floor while I was vacuuming, but I’m tough. I can do that.

1985: My 2nd child Marnie was born at 12:30, just after lunch, and I went home at 6pm that day — too much to do, needed to get home to Katie and throw a birth day party for Marnie after all. I made her a birth day cake, made dinner, and got busy. I’m made of hearty pioneer stock, remember.

my great-grandmother (2nd from the right), Lottie Ribble Askew

2004: I didn’t see that patch of black ice at the end of my friend’s driveway in Boston. I was there to give the keynote speech at her university’s Darwin Festival (why??) and I hadn’t written it yet, bad, bad form. So I hit the ice,

yikes. that hurt.

and fell and broke both bones in my right wrist so severely that my hand was hanging like a limp bag of bones off the end of my arm. We went to the ER, I got a cast, went back to her house and typed a speech, made my PowerPoints. The next morning I gave the speech and drove myself back to Rochester NY — a 7-hour drive in snowy icy conditions in a stick-shift car, no less, how did I do that? (The better question is why did I do that…) The breaks were so severe that I ended up needing surgery to have an external fixator screwed into the bones.

There’s obviously a very thin line between being tough and being a moron, and I don’t seem to know which side of the line to stand on.

But boy, give me a paper cut or a cold and wah, wah, wah! I’m the most pathetic miserable person, and you will know about it. Yesterday morning I got an email from a friend, a social psychologist who became one of my authors at OUP, and we just clicked so well we developed a wonderful friendship (we call each other bro and sis). In my response to his email, of course I mentioned just how very very sick I am, and how much a baby whiner I am despite being so tough otherwise. He got it, and wrote me this hilarious response:

So I feel sorry for you and wish I could return you to your normal wonderful self. I agree that this cold shouldn’t have happened to you and it should go away immediately. You’re too good a person to have to suffer this way. Plus, there are so many things you want to do and now you can’t do them. And, you have to stay inside, perhaps even in bed, when you want to be out in the world. Pobrecita.

Isn’t that hilarious and wonderful?! I think my favorite crazy line is “you’re too good a person to have to suffer this way.” That makes me laugh every time I read it or think about it.

I think there’s something about the very mundane pedestrian unimportant aspect of colds and paper cuts that gives me the freedom to wallow. With bigger concerns, I have to armor up, woman up, DO IT. But a cold? wah, wah, wah. Poor poor pitiful me. Bring me some tea. And Kleenex. And feel very sorry for me.