I am completely useless today, unless your idea of usefulness is sitting around with a box of tissues blowing my nose every five minutes and then throwing my head back dramatically and groaning. I'm not sick, the sinus gods just hate me. I took a Claritin and am hoping I will be human again soon.
If I had lived back in the time of the Oregon Trail, I would so have been the first to die. There were no tissues, so I'd be the one staggering behind the wagon, red-eyed and puffy, until I fell over dead or a coyote ate me. I'd probably be the first to get typhoid fever, or cholera, or whatever other weird diseases were floating around. I have no sense of direction, so I'd either get lost while we were foraging for berries or I'd lead the wagon into the middle of a lake. I have no common sense, so I'd probably forget to pack something really important, like clothing or food, or I'd walk in front of an ox and it would step on or bite me. And cooking? I think we all know we can just forget about that.
Plus, with my record of hurting myself in stupid ways, I'd probably break my ankle stepping down from the wagon or shoot myself in the foot with a rifle. Yeah, I'd say it's a good thing I didn't have to live back then, because I don't think I would have lasted long.
There was something twisted about that game, wasn't there? I know it was supposed to be some educational tool, because we played it in all my classes in elementary school, but most of the time we were left unattended at the computer. Inevitably, we would pack too little food, set the pace as fast as possible, and see how many people made it to the end. Sick, deranged, twisted children we were.
And we would always name the characters after people in the class, so we could yell across the classroom, "Hey, Paul, you just drowned while we were crossing the river!" or "Paul, guess what? You have the flu and it looks BAD!"
Poor Paul. He never made it.
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