One "Flu" over the cuckoo's nest!

The flu can't keep me down when worry keeps me up: Minister of Culture
by Michael Heaton/Plain Dealer Minister of Culture
Thursday February 26, 2009, 12:00 AM

MINISTER OF CULTURE
Monday morning, I woke up sick as a pike. Fever, chills, lungs on fire, achy, shaky and full of foul, gelatinous bile. I was a mess. I pulled the covers over my head and was determined to go deep into hibernation until the literal ill wind blew over.
My wife doesn't go in for that game plan. She says that when she is sick she still has to take care of the kids. She muscles through. She wills herself well. Or well enough. And expects me to do the same.

But I'm a big baby when I get sick. After 17 years of marriage, I'm less of a baby. Her theory works. But not on this morning. I told her I was going back to sleep until the physical tsunami passed or ebbed.

I grabbed a bottle of cherry-flavored Theraflu and took a couple of big slugs. Then I burrowed back into the bed, still shaking and quaking. I quickly fell into a comalike state. Then there was a poking on my shoulder.
It was Mayor Frank Jackson. "Mike," he said. "The city is in trouble. We need everyone to pull together. This is no time for sleeping."
I told him I was sick. Then faded.

The next thing I saw was a reporter from Channel 19 at my bed. She asked me if my illness had kept me from boarding the plane that had recently crashed.
"What are you talking about?" I said before passing out.
Then I heard this pounding, this drumming that woke me back up. It was LeBron James dribbling a basketball in my bedroom. He gave me that intense stare.
"Rise up, man," he said. He wanted me to do that leaping chest bump thing with him.
I told him I was under the weather. He didn't seem to get it.

The next time I came to, my eyes began to focus on a guy with eyebrows like steel-wool wings. It was Andy Rooney from "60 Minutes."
"The thing about sleep is that everyone sleeps. But nobody ever talks about sleeping," he said.
I said, "Dude, you're putting me to sleep right now."
When I opened my eyes again, there was Nadya Suleman and her 14 children tearing up my bedroom. They were in my sock and underwear drawers tossing everything everywhere. Total chaos. Just before I faded out again, I remember saying, "Nice lips."

Then there was Mickey Rourke crying about his dog Loki who died and about not winning the Oscar. I held his hand. I tried to give comfort. But he was all busted up. Inconsolable.
By this time, I wasn't at all surprised to see President Barack Obama at my bedside.
"How will we achieve real and meaningful change if people continue to sleep through this national crisis? You need some stimulus bad."
I asked him for a cigarette. He made a motion for his breast pocket and then caught himself.
We both laughed.

I thought it was all over when suddenly I was bathed in the White Light. It was Jesus, all aflame in His glory, arms spread out, floating above my bed, beckoning me.
"Rise up, my son," he said.
I told him that was LeBron's line.
"Who?" he asked.

I got up out of bed and headed for the shower. My wife looked surprised and asked me if I was going to work after all.

"Who can get any rest around here?" I asked. "It's like Grand Central Station."