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Why Can’t One Have Catarrh in Peace Again?

By Farooq Kperogi Twitter: @farooqkperogi Because of the dread that COVID-19 inspires in us, it’s no longer possible for people to have the ...

By Farooq Kperogi

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Because of the dread that COVID-19 inspires in us, it’s no longer possible for people to have the common cold, catarrh, or even mild sniffles in peace. You’ll always be suspected to be COVID-19 positive and avoided like a plague!

This is the common cold/flu season in America, but when I came down with a bad cold on November 6, I became a pariah even in my own home. 

My kids thought I had COVID, wouldn't touch me with a barge pole, and greeted every sneeze and cough that escaped from my mouth with mischievous chants of “corona!”

My graduate students begged me to turn our face-to-face class to a synchronous online instructional format.

No one believed that I had a mere common cold even though I’m fully vaxxed up and have been extra cautious. 

This reminds me of a trending internet meme that says we avoided negative people in 2019, avoided "positive" people in 2020, and now avoid all people in 2021.

What took the cake for me, though, was the suggestion by superstitious Nigerians that my cold was the result of concentrated metaphysical missiles from the combined forces of Buharists, Pantami sympathizers, and pissed-off Pentecostal Christian fanatics and/or Yoruba nationalists whose brittle emotions I hurt by writing about the oppression of Yoruba Muslims in their own land.

As I reviewed some of the hundreds of tags and mentions that my November 6 column generated, I actually saw some hilariously crackbrained zealots boast that my cold wasn’t “ordinary,” that it was a spiritually guided retributive projectile against me for instigating a discursive upheaval in Yoruba land. 🤣

Others said it was the result of the pressure the childish temper tantrums that halfwits were throwing my way--which I’d not even seen, much less read--exerted on me.🤣🤣🤣

I think a heck of a lot of people are overpampered little babies trapped in adults’ bodies. They are chronologically old but they’re emotionally children. Perhaps we should invent a new word for people like that. I suggest “childults,” which is a portmanteau formed by combining “child” and “adults.”

Well, this is a circuitous way of saying I recovered fully from the cold just seven days after being down and out with it. It was not COVID. Please, allow people to cough and sneeze in peace o jare!

4 comments

  1. Hahaha Prof. the thing tire me oo.

    ReplyDelete
  2. My Mentor and Boss, permit me to say without any fear of equivocation that you have more friends and loved one than foes or adversaries.

    This writer is a taunch believer in the Christian Faith and I absolutely don't see how you stirred up the hornet's nest on your article against Yoruba Christians on their Muslim brethren. I know one thing for sure, life hasn't been fair anywhere one finds themselves. There has always been cases of social imbalance or dystopia everywhere.

    Besides, a lot of us who are your avid proponents do so based on our convinctions that you have proven yourself to be an advocate of truth irrespective of whose axe is gored.

    Continue to enjoy sprightliness of health and see your haory of years and above all, enjoy Nirvana all years.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hmmm .... Alhamdu-Lillah! Glory be to Almighty God, you are well now. The wait is over, and I am particularly happy that you did not contract the 'COVIKH 1-9 Virus'! Lol! 🙏👏😂

    ReplyDelete
  4. I am very happy to hear this, sir. May Allah shower His abundance health and knowledge to continue revealing the secret of these Nigerians elites.

    ReplyDelete

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