You’ve been sick and still have a lingering cough, but you decide you are well enough to go to church. You are fine through the announcements and the hymns, but then comes the first prayer, you know, the one followed by a moment of silence. As you sit, an irritating tickle begins at the back of your throat. You tell yourself it’s nothing. You try to ignore it, but it grows worse.
Suddenly you can hold it back no longer and you cough. It sounds like thunder and sets off a barrage of other congregant’s coughs. The sanctuary now sounds like a TB ward. Finally, you hear an amen and the sermon begins. Your throat has developed another tickle, but you try to judiciously time your coughs when the preacher is talking, hopefully loudly, but eventually you are faced with the choice of leaving the sanctuary or trying to tough it out. Does this sound familiar?
Suffering from a persistent cough, I once got through a Marine Corps Band concert with the aid of a bottle of water. Despite a cough, I’ve sung in a choir with the aid of a Pastille mint, that secret weapon of choirs, unobtrusively passed among members right before a performance. Sometimes, as much as you might try, as many tricks as you might use, the cough wins.
The worst coughing experience I’ve had was several years ago while attending a Nikki Giovanni event. Long an admirer of this famous poet and writer, a friend and I arrived at the venue early and obtained center seats only three rows from the stage. The first two rows were filled with ladies of a similar age, and when Ms. Giovanni entered the stage, it became apparent they were close friends of hers, possibly former classmates from the artist’s Knoxville high school years. Ms. Giovanni walked to the edge of the stage, looked down at her friends and said, “Y’all tell my son I haven’t heard from him in six months and that the phone works both ways!” Amid murmurs from her friends, the artist walked to the podium, and I felt my first cough coming on.
I tried to cough quietly but could tell a momentum building. Ms. Giovanni had that presence of the scariest teacher you’ve ever had. She possesses a look that says, “just try that and see how far you get.” Being within eye contact of a prominent person in the Civil Rights Movement, a woman partially known for her angry poems about prejudice and a woman who was currently already mad, I couldn’t see white little me getting up and leaving to cough. Choking, I sat still and listened to the woman’s amazing story and poetry. By the time she left the stage, my attempts to muffle my cough had left me with tears running down my face. “Finally,” I thought, I can escape. As I began to rise from my seat, the Fisk University Choir came on stage. Their conductor glanced at me and with a start, I realized he was a former student of mine. I absolutely could not walk out on James. When the curtains finally closed, I rushed out of the theater and headed to the nearest water fountain coughing the entire way.
“Tis the season,” as they say, for coughing, the flu, RSV and any number of other winter ailments. Many schools across the nation are closing due to illness, and going out in public requires courage and a good mask. Gather ye cough drops as ye may, stock up on tissues, drink plenty of liquids and hunker down. And, by the way, if you have any tricks up your sleeve to stop coughing, let me know. Things are getting desperate around here.
Cindy Arp, teacher/librarian, retired from Knox County Schools. She and husband Dan live in Heiskell.
