Last week I came down with a severe sinus infection, which arrived complete with a monstrous headache and various body aches. At first, I expected to be better in a day or two, but after missing two bridge games, I resolved to visit my friendly doctor and have him mend me. Enough is enough. I saw him on Thursday morning.
“Fix me,” I told him. “Please do it fast. I’ve missed two bridge games already and I’m supposed to go to Atlanta tomorrow to visit my grandchildren. I am not in the habit of disappointing them.”
“We’ll see what we can do,” he replied, “but I don’t know if you want to go to Atlanta this weekend or not. It’ll be a mad house with the Georgia ballgame.”
“Every weekend in Atlanta is a madhouse,” I replied. “Just fix me and I’ll take my chances.”
Little did he know that my eldest grandson Stuart and I were driving up so he could go to Dragon Con with his 3 younger brothers and their dad, my eldest son, Calvin. Dragon Con is the nation’s leading multi-media and pop culture convention in the nation and was expected to bring 90,000 extra people to Atlanta for the Labor Day Weekend. It was bringing the latest in science fiction and fantasy gaming, comics, literature, art, music and film. All the grandchildren could hardly wait to get there. The convention runs for 4 days, but they were going just on Saturday. Let me make it very clear from the beginning that at no time did I plan to attend. Spending a lovely September Saturday on Peachtree Street with 90,000 of my closest friends just does not appeal to me. Julie, my daughter-in-law, and I planned to see the males off and then do a bit of shopping on our own.
After giving me two shots and some antibiotic pills, the doctor assured me that I’d be much better by Friday morning. So would Hermine, the tropical storm, for that matter. He blasted his way into town before I was well enough to leave. I lay in bed all of Friday night listening to the rain and wind outside my window. I couldn’t sleep because the mighty steroids had my system on alert. I finally dozed off around 4 a.m.
At 8 a.m. I arose and decided I was well enough to go; surely we’d outrun the storm in an hour or so since we were traveling north. We packed and left around 10:30 in fairly calm weather.
For the complete column pick up your copy of The Baxley News-Banner on newsstands today or
CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE.