I don’t get colds. I refuse. I take extra precautions to the point of obsession. This has absolutely nothing to do with fear of germs or being compulsive about cleanliness, but every thing to do with the torture and humiliation I have to endure if I do ever catch a cold.
Thus is was with great regret that I actually caught my first cold in years this past week which basically is the worst thing that can happen in the world if you live in Hello Kitty Hell. It’s not the stuffy nose, sore throat or headache that is bad — those are merely minor symptoms compared to the pain and embarrassment of having to roam around with a Hello Kitty face mask:
In Japan, you wear these when you have a cold so that you don’t give your cold to other people. I have absolutely no problem with this concept except when Hello Kitty is plastered on the front of the face mask. It is just so wrong in so many ways when a 6 foot 3 inch foreigner wanders the streets of Japan with a Hello Kitty face mask on and it isn’t only me that sees it this way. You can see the sheer terror in the eyes of the Japanese when they see me, undoubtedly believing that I’m going to hack them to pieces at any moment because that is the type of crazy foreigner that would actually wear a Hello Kitty face mask.
My wife, of course, thinks that it’s the cutest thing ever to the point where she wants to walk around town together with matching Hello Kitty face masks on. She says that it is good practice for when the bird flu arrives and I may have to spend months wearing these Hello Kitty face masks. Somehow dying from the bird flu doesn’t sound all that bad when looking at the alternative of living…
This means that for the next week I have the choice of being cooped up in our house with no escape from the Hello Kitty Hellishness that is somehow still referred to as our house (although it really looks more like the worst pink nightmare that you could ever imagine) or I must venture out to endure the extreme humiliation that would be considered cruel and unusual torture if forced upon any enemy combatants during a time of war. Alas, this is a common dilemma when you live in Hello Kitty Hell…