Saturday February 15th, 2014

The exercise:

Write a four line poem about: fighting fire with fire.

I got a text this morning from the girl covering my shift, as I expected. What I wasn't planning on was that it was to tell me she was getting sick as well.

My heart sank at first, but then I saw that she was asking to split the shift with me. She ended up taking the morning (which is when I feel the worst when I'm sick) and I went in at one to finish the day off.

On my way there I stopped at the pharmacy to grab some cough syrup (more on that in my poem), hoping it would help me to not cough every time I spoke with someone. It made it a little better, I think.

The best part, however, was definitely arriving to discover that the birthday party I'd been thinking about, the one with 20 people, is actually next Saturday. Nothing was booked for the alley at all.

So basically I spent the next four hours performing the function of Warm Body Behind Counter and not much else. Thankfully it was a very quiet day, as I couldn't have handled much more.

Mine:

This illness is like the plague.
This medicine tastes like grout.
Surely such horrible things
Will cancel each other out?

2 comments:

Greg said...

It sounds like this illness is doing a thorough round of Penticton then! I'm glad that it all worked out in the end so that even though you went in it was a quiet and peaceful day and easy to cope with in your weakened state.
I think they put much less sugar in adult medicines these days, and most drugs taste bitter, so it's no surprise it tastes like grout. Tell the pharmacist it's for Max and you'll get the full-sugar version :)
And... great poem! Very bouncy and chirpy, unlike the narrator!

Fighting fire with fire
Sacked again as Fire Chief,
I can't think what's not right.
I burned down half the city
To save the rest last night.

Marc said...

Greg - okay, it didn't taste quite as bad as grout (true story: the rhyme was 'gout' in the first version), but I'd forgotten how terrible that stuff is.

I almost missed that 'again' in the first line, and I'm glad that I didn't :)