No Me Siento Bien*
*[you can imagine the accent mark over the e in "bien"--my html skills are not up to putting it in]
Sunday night, out of nowhere, at the end of a most lovely nonwinterlike day, I started to feel that dry scratchy feeling in my throat that means I'm getting a cold. Yesterday, Monday, I went to work. All day I tried to ignore the sore throat and the occasional coughing fits I was also having. At night, I dosed myself up with psuedoephedrine in order to go to my second job--teaching literature. Teaching went okay, but I was glad to pile into a cab with my one colleague who enthusiastically shares my penchant for taking the emost expensive way home. We were both so tired we could hardly stand, so when I halfheartedly suggested the subway, she nixed that idea, to my great joy.
At home, I felt so awful that I didn't even want to eat, just took some more psuedofed--and ibuprofen--and went to bed. This morning, I felt marginally better and thought I could make it to work. [You know how once you're in the shower, you think, "yes, I can do this!"]
Got myself dressed, out of the house, even brought my volleyball things with me because I thought if I could make it to work, I might feel well enough to play in a game scheduled for tonight, in a league I just joined. I was walking up the street towards the subway when I started to feel nauseated, on top of my sore throat and cough. I thought I probably just needed something to eat (after all that cold medicine) and if I could make it to work and get my coffee I'd be fine. But the nausea got worse as I walked, and the thought of enduring the ride on the subway before I got to the coffee made me, if anything, feel sicker.
Then I remembered this sign I always find myself pondering when I'm on the subway. It's printed in both English and Spanish. It has a picture of an umbrella floating in the air, and maybe some other things, like hats (?) or rain. In the English version, underneath the umbrella it says, "Feeling under the weather today? The best thing is not to get on the train." Next to it, underneath the same exact visuals, it says, in Spanish, something like, "No se siente muy bien hoy? Lo mejor es no entrar en el tren." (I'm not sure I'm remembering the second sentence correctly, but the first, the question, is exact.)
Every single time I look at the pair of signs, I have the same sequence of thoughts. I think, oh, how interesting that in Spanish, you can't say, "under the weather," it's obviously not an expression in Spanish, so you have to just say "not feeling well." Then I think how much better the sign works in English because the umbrella reinforces the idea of "under." Then, I look at the question in Spanish, and I think, oh, yes, I remember, "sentirse" is a reflexive verb, that's why you have to say "se siente" instead of just "siente" in the second person singular. Then I think about how I really don't know how to do that with other verbs in Spanish, or don't remember which are reflexive and which are not, let alone which can vary with the circumstance, and I feel sad about my pitiful grasp of Spanish, which I studied for many years and once had some facility with.
After visualizng these signs, and once again having this sequence of thoughts, this time while I was standing on the street trying to decide whether to go to work or not, I gave into the nausea and went home and called in sick. On my supervisor's answering machine I reported that I wasn't feeling well, but had started out to go to work. "Then," I continued, "I thought of those signs you see on the subway, the ones that say you shouldn't get on the subway if you're not feeling well, and I decided I should stay home."
Sunday night, out of nowhere, at the end of a most lovely nonwinterlike day, I started to feel that dry scratchy feeling in my throat that means I'm getting a cold. Yesterday, Monday, I went to work. All day I tried to ignore the sore throat and the occasional coughing fits I was also having. At night, I dosed myself up with psuedoephedrine in order to go to my second job--teaching literature. Teaching went okay, but I was glad to pile into a cab with my one colleague who enthusiastically shares my penchant for taking the emost expensive way home. We were both so tired we could hardly stand, so when I halfheartedly suggested the subway, she nixed that idea, to my great joy.
At home, I felt so awful that I didn't even want to eat, just took some more psuedofed--and ibuprofen--and went to bed. This morning, I felt marginally better and thought I could make it to work. [You know how once you're in the shower, you think, "yes, I can do this!"]
Got myself dressed, out of the house, even brought my volleyball things with me because I thought if I could make it to work, I might feel well enough to play in a game scheduled for tonight, in a league I just joined. I was walking up the street towards the subway when I started to feel nauseated, on top of my sore throat and cough. I thought I probably just needed something to eat (after all that cold medicine) and if I could make it to work and get my coffee I'd be fine. But the nausea got worse as I walked, and the thought of enduring the ride on the subway before I got to the coffee made me, if anything, feel sicker.
Then I remembered this sign I always find myself pondering when I'm on the subway. It's printed in both English and Spanish. It has a picture of an umbrella floating in the air, and maybe some other things, like hats (?) or rain. In the English version, underneath the umbrella it says, "Feeling under the weather today? The best thing is not to get on the train." Next to it, underneath the same exact visuals, it says, in Spanish, something like, "No se siente muy bien hoy? Lo mejor es no entrar en el tren." (I'm not sure I'm remembering the second sentence correctly, but the first, the question, is exact.)
Every single time I look at the pair of signs, I have the same sequence of thoughts. I think, oh, how interesting that in Spanish, you can't say, "under the weather," it's obviously not an expression in Spanish, so you have to just say "not feeling well." Then I think how much better the sign works in English because the umbrella reinforces the idea of "under." Then, I look at the question in Spanish, and I think, oh, yes, I remember, "sentirse" is a reflexive verb, that's why you have to say "se siente" instead of just "siente" in the second person singular. Then I think about how I really don't know how to do that with other verbs in Spanish, or don't remember which are reflexive and which are not, let alone which can vary with the circumstance, and I feel sad about my pitiful grasp of Spanish, which I studied for many years and once had some facility with.
After visualizng these signs, and once again having this sequence of thoughts, this time while I was standing on the street trying to decide whether to go to work or not, I gave into the nausea and went home and called in sick. On my supervisor's answering machine I reported that I wasn't feeling well, but had started out to go to work. "Then," I continued, "I thought of those signs you see on the subway, the ones that say you shouldn't get on the subway if you're not feeling well, and I decided I should stay home."
posted by Sarah Sometimes at 12:18 PM
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