friday march 5

today i took the greyhound bus to london from toronto. i've been battling a cold for a good part of the week and it had evolved to the point today where i had a consistent cough. not wanting to be a bad passenger on the bus, i managed to suppress the need to make hacking coughing noises every couple minutes for at least the first hour of the ride. during the second half of the drive though, i noticed a tickling feeling in my throat, forcing me to cough once or twice. when these coughs didn't get rid of the tickling sensation, i realized i had two choices: the first was a full-fledged two-minute coughing fit, which would eliminate the tickling but make it sound to everyone else on the bus they like they were traveling with a dying swine flu patient. the second choice, which i opted for, was to sit silently facing the window, eyes watering as i held off the urge to cough with every fiber of my body. this also eliminated the feeling in my throat, albeit not quite so quickly. when the discomfort passed, i thought i'd even gotten away with no one noticing my predicament. however, now that i'm thinking about it, i'm wondering if the girl sitting beside me asking if i needed sunglasses was less a result of a doting concern about my window-seat position, and more a reaction to the tears she saw streaming down my face as i looked out the window into the sun.