When I awoke in the middle of the night with a throat so sore I could drink my wife's moisturizer, I began to cast around in the back of my head for what could have caused this new annoyance to enter my life.

Was it the 4 shots of vodka last night, that somehow inebriated my immune system sufficiently to allow a small virus past?

Was it that eating 5 meals of hamburger and chips in 8 days has left my body deficient on vital nutrients found in, say, pasta, which are necessary to stave of these small illnesses?

Could it be that right before bed I had drunk water from an unwashed mixer cup, still bearing the smeary remnants of a yogurt and raw-egg shake from the distant past? Could that somehow have caused a sore throat?

Then I remembered. The class I had taught Monday, yesterday, - one of the boys had said he had been sick on Thursday. Headache. Fever. Vomiting. The works.

I did a quick mental inventory, checking for any of the above symptoms.

Just because I didn't find any doesn't mean it isn't entirely his fault.

I poured the remaining orange juice into the filthy, smeared mixer-cup, then gave the box a last squeeze, which caused it to huff out a last wheezy blerp of orange juice. I crumpled the box without thinking , and threw it on the floor next to the trash. Two separate thoughts sat in my head, too lazy to form themselves into actual words.

When is my wife coming back?

That little bastard. He made me sick.