Story Over A Cup: Living the Pirate’s Creed

Published 8:39 am Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Michael Cole

Several years ago, like 2007, I got a bad case of the flu.

Having a relatively low immune system, I am honestly amazed I do not remain forever sick. But I guess everyone can get lucky every now and again.

But this was November, winter seemed to be coming earlier this particular year, and of course, the flu was in full swing. I caught its fly ball and was out.

I am very forgetful when it comes to taking my medicine which is not a daily occurrence. New medicines usually I forget. Especially cold medicine and if it is more than once a day, forget about it.

I forget what medicine it was, but it made me drowsy. 

Well, this was before the boys were born, or even Jada. We had a Welsh Corgi named Foxy and a Yorkie mix named Max. Tossing that tidbit out, it will become important later.

I woke up this particular morning to the phone ringing. My wife had already gone to work.

“Did you take your medicine this morning?” she asked.

I looked at the time. I had overslept.

“Yes” was my reply.

My wife answered, “Good. It’s time to take your next dose.”

I mumbled something about taking it and she hung up to go back to work.

This is where the story takes a turn for the manpidity. 

For those of you that do not talk to me a lot, manpidity is what I call my stupid choices made because I am a man.

I grabbed to bottle and figured since I had missed my earlier dose and it was time to take the next one, why not take both.

Bad reasoning skills right there.

Within an hour, I felt fine.

I felt better than fine. I felt supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

I picked up both Foxy and Max and put them on the bed so we could have fun.

That was not unusual at the time, both slept on the bed with us. A nine-pound Yorkie and twenty-five-pound Corgi do not take up a lot of room.

A while after that, my wife called to check up on me.

I answered, “Fine, in fact, me and Max have decided to become pirates.”

“Pirates?” my wife questioned.

“Yep. We are taking the pirate’s creed and getting ready to pillage the neighbors right now.”

My wife replied, “How many pills did you take?”

“I took both doses.”

“When? What time?”

“Does anybody really know what time it is?” I asked philosophically.

At that point, I started singing a “dead man’s chest.” My wife said something and hung up. 

In record time, my wife got home and raced to the bedroom. There she saw me feeding a box of cookies to Foxy and Max. They were enjoying me singing pirate diddys and feeding them the treasure of our plunder.

My wife took my treasure to the chagrin of the dogs and told me to lay down. I think I fell asleep almost immediately afterward.

To this day, my wife makes fun of me and my short-lived adventure on the Bound’en Spanish Main.

 

 

Michael Cole is a syndicated columnist that when he is not writing, he is plotting global domination. He is also forbidden to live the pirate’s creed. You can follow him at www.storyoveracup.com