Why I Missed The No Kings March

​        Sadly, I did not participate, except in spirit, in any of the March 28 No King's Marches here in Columbus, Ohio.

​         I was not among the 20,000 marchers who took to the streets in the greater Columbus area because for the past few weeks my upper respiratory system has been under siege by a virus.
     Magnified 500,000 times, here's what my virus looks like under a microscope.   

         It's a shape-shifting zombie virus.
         That is to say, this nanoscopic little demon might attack for a few days in the form of a headache and sore throat, then beat a retreat before returning a few days later as a killer cough with a sidekick of sinus congestion from hell, until it mutates yet again into some or another underhanded entity that leaves me plodding along  in that tired, achy, indescribably crappyesque state that my mother the nurse used to call general malaise, which is where I more or less was last Saturday.
          It's my understanding  that a virus is not exactly a living thing.  But it's not exactly a not-living thing, either.  It's somewhere between a living thing and a not-living  thing. In other words, a zombie. Which is why, though a virus can kill you, you can't kill it. 
​         (If only someone could figure out how to shoot out the brains of a microbe).  
​          Still, I'm thankful from the bottom of my cough-wracked rib cage to all those patriotic Americans who were part of No Kings:
​          My good friends,

...my loved ones,

...the 8 million across this country who marched,

...and the hundreds of thousands around the world.

        Thank you to you all who represented for those millions more of us who were there in spirit.