Sick Joke

You’re on your third week of having a sinus infection (you know your mom’s right, you should go to the doctor) and the most soul-crushing and hurtful thing you have to go through is dealing with the last few tissues in a box of Kleenex. You wonder what heartless individual working at Kleenex had the sick idea to wad up the last ten tissues in the box and make it impossible to retrieve just one in a civilized fashion.

“Oh, but just pull one out slowly,” they say. “You know they do that because it’s supposed to let you know that the box is almost empty and it will soon be time to replace it,” they tell you.

But you can’t pull it out slowly when you have a newborn-baby-mustard-poop-like substance Niagara Falls-ing out of your nostrils. You’re ripping those tissues out of the box like your grabbing cash in a fan-flurried money booth. And since you can’t pull it out slowly, in one quick movement you’ve managed to fling the box across the bathroom as you watch the bottom wad of Kleenex descend like white-winged angels upon the back of your toilet seat. You look at the fallen tissues, your nose tingles and your eyes water. You can’t use them. Wait, when was the last time you cleaned the toilet? It wasn’t that long ago. But you did pee recently. You’re aim is decent but the last time you went you sneezed, causing your line to stray from its intended trajectory (if you were standing), or causing increased pressure to create the possibility of too much splashing that you can’t say for certain doesn’t exist (if you were sitting). You can’t use those tissues. They are trash now; wasted opportunities at breathing freely. Try not to cry as you throw them away, it will just make your nose run more. 

So now you look down at your hand, and oh look, what’s that you’re holding? One tissue! It’s the one you ripped out of the box so violently. Good for you, you hung on to it. But yeah, that is, in fact, the last one. I guess you are aware now that it’s time for a new box of Kleenex; their plan worked!

You open a new box, if you’re lucky enough to have another, and you realize that the Kleenex packaging engineer did the same thing to the first tissue in the box. If you take your time with it, you’ll be able to pull out the top one without ripping it and cram the rest of the opening wad back into the box at the same time snot uses your philtrum as an irrigation ditch to get to your mouth.

So yeah, it’s time to call the doctor and get that antibiotic.