Irony Embodied

One month ago, I took a day off to take my kids snowboarding -- and I believed I had earned this day off, as I hadn't taken a sick day all year, and so this was my reward for being so healthy . . . and after I drove home from the snowboarding trip, I felt so vigorous and energetic that I went to my Wednesday night basketball game, thinking to myself: though I'm forty-four, I feel invincible . . . I can snowboard all day, and still play basketball at night, I'm made of iron, I'm unbreakable . . . and then five days later I came down with the flu, which led to severe bronchitis, and now, though I'm a bit better, I'm still mired in mucous and have a lingering cough, and though I know in my brain that there's no connection between my boastful thoughts and the virus that brought me down, my heart thinks differently.