Thank Christ I’m not a bird dog.

I’d be wrangled up, taken out behind the tree line and shot dead where I stood because I was apparently no longer able to sniff out a pile of my own feces two feet in front of me, much less moving, hiding prey. A one-time master of my craft, I would now be more worthless to Farmer John than a willing virgin to a eunuch. I would have no voice with which explain my simple, temporary problem– I have fallen a tragic victim to a terrible, unrelenting head cold.

My sinuses are crammed fuller than 2nd Street at four in the afternoon and, despite all the Kumbocha tea, green tea, black tea and whisktea chugging and vitamin C huffing, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. Yes, thank Christ my life does not depend on my for-now defunct olfactory.

It is because of my plight that my tongue now squelches and squirms against the roof of my mouth in a desperate attempt to relieve the burn from my most recent waste of $2.10 - the Starshmucks “Highway Robbery” flavored green tea. I’m not even in a real Star-gimme-all-your-bucks drinking a real “Highway Robbery” tea.

Although, I’ll admit, this student-centric façade in the Nigh Center does a damn good job of imitating the real thing – overpriced drinks, overloud music and overfriendly slingers. I’m talking the kinds that wear such a god-awful, toothy gape of grin that, as I approach, I don’t know whether they’re smiling or baring their teeth in preparation to let out a throaty growl warning me to stay away from their precious ground bean juice. “Take ‘er easy there, Killer. I’m not after your hot-enough-to-melt-the-sun coffee. No, instead I think I'd rather scald my already raw throat with some of your green, boiling water. What’s that? Why, yes, I would like to pay the price of a vacation home in The Hamptons for it.”

The scene continues in my head, or it would if I didn’t have “Lean on Me” blaring so forcefully in my ears that the only appropriate way I can think to describe it is “auditory rape.” It’s taken me a great deal longer to write these 474 paltry words than it should have, thanks solely to the suffocation my poor thought processes suffer at the hands of such a musical menace.

Ah, to be free of this place and out in a field or a forest, sprinting from bush-to-tree with not but the blinding sun in my eyes and the wind whipping my ears. No expensive faux-remedies torching my tongue. No ironically retro “college playlist jams” beating my eardrums senseless. Just the sun and the wind and, finally, the bullet. Perhaps life and death as a sick bird dog would not be such a terrible thing after all.