The Gift of Covid

• A Christmas Conundrum:

  What do you do when the much-anticipated family gathering is jeopardized by an unexpected bout of COVID-19? Dave recounts his experience, offering a candid and touching perspective on the true meaning of the season.

• Reminiscing with Friends:

  From cherished childhood memories to the pains and aches of getting older, Dave and his best friend embark on a nostalgic journey, bringing laughs and poignant moments.

• The Gift of Adaptation:

  Learn how Dave turned a disappointing holiday season into a moment of gratitude and reflection, even dubbing COVID-19 as an unexpected Christmas gift.

• Chicken Noodle Soup for the Soul:

  A simple can of soup leads Dave down memory lane, teaching us all the power of sensory experiences and the warmth of family traditions.

• Adventures in Everyday Life:

  From rolling into a gas station with an empty tank to making peace with life's unpredictable nature, Dave's tales offer inspiration and a fresh perspective on life's little adventures.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I was woe was me when when I'm getting old,
you know.

(00:31):
Hello. So
it's last Friday, and
I start to feel, you know, a little like, am
I am I getting sick? I don't know. But, you know, the nose
is a little runny. Yeah. I got I don't wanna get sick
because Saturday

(00:52):
is Christmas for me, or in this case, last Saturday
because my brother goes out of town. And so I try to
get we try to get everyone together, which is hard now because my
great nieces and nephew are teenagers.
At least he yeah. I I would say 2 out of 3 at this point.
And so we know it's just a matter of time until it's like, oh, do

(01:14):
I have to go? You know, that's gonna be there. And
regardless, right, you only have so many Christmases when they're little.
And I know 16 isn't little, especially when he's like, he's gonna
be taller than me probably this coming year. So I was looking
forward to it, but it's Friday before that, and I start to get
the sniffles. And I'm like, oh, that's weird because I don't really get

(01:38):
sick a whole lot. And so I start popping vitamins
and drinking, what are airborne, that
kind of stuff. And I wake up on Saturday,
and my eyes are really hot. You know what I mean?
There's just aches everywhere. And I got a
I got a radio show to do. And so

(02:01):
I'd slept in, and I had about 45
minutes until it was time to hit go. And so
I take a quick shower,
go through my show, but I'm I'm I'm just not I'm
not firing on all cylinders, you know, and I'm like, okay. And I
occasionally had to blow my nose and things like that.

(02:24):
And it dawns on me about 3 fourths of the way
through the show that my whole body hurts. And I was
like, oh, this is not good. Because I'm supposed to
go to Christmas in about, you know, 2 hours.
And I'm like, man, I haven't felt this
bad since. And I was like, oh, since the last time I

(02:46):
had COVID. Because COVID just everything hurts.
And I was like, alright. Well, I get done with my show.
I publish it in record time, and I'm like,
I've got an hour. And that will give me then I'll have like a half
hour to get to my brother's house. And I was like, no, right. Somehow I'm
gonna take a nap. And mysteriously,

(03:09):
miraculously, I should better say, I'm gonna beat this thing
and be able to do Christmas because if you've ever seen
any Christmas, you know, special, it's
always like, yay, Christmas is coming. What? Oh,
no. And then the next one is like, do you think that'll work? And
then it's always Merry Christmas to all and to all good night. And so

(03:30):
I am in the do you think that will work phase? Do you think, you
know, a half hour nap will make me completely well?
I don't know. But we got to try to save Christmas. Well, it works on
TV, but it didn't work on me. And so I call my brother and
I'm like, dude, I am I am not well. I go, I'm
probably gonna go get a COVID test, but I got presents for

(03:53):
the kids. Yada, yada, yada. Go take my
test. Yeah. Not in you know how sometimes on the COVID test,
you're kind of like, well, if I look at it in the light, I might
have cope no, this was like you have COVID. And I was like,
okay. So we we did a thing where we more or
less exchange things on the front porch outside,

(04:16):
had a mask on, you know, the whole 9 yards.
And on the way home, man, I was like, man, like, I've
been looking forward to Christmas all month, and
I just missed it. And so they gave me
cookies, of course, you know, and my great nieces and nephews bought me
some things. So that was cool. But I was like,

(04:38):
and it was kind of a weird ending because I just had a friend of
mine that popped in out of town, kind of out of
nowhere. He's my best friend, kind of a surprise visit
wasn't planned, but we got to hang out a little bit. And look,
we're both 59. And we're kind of doing the old
you remember when this was, you know, and this doesn't well, I can't

(05:01):
we're just complaining about getting old. And I was telling him, like,
man, I said it's bad enough that my right knee works
about 90% of the time going up and downstairs. I'm like, but now I
got tendonitis, better known as tennis elbow. And I'm like,
my right side of my body is just shutting down. And I'm
like, I need to get in better shape, but it's hard to get in better

(05:23):
shape when, you know, you can't get your body up to to get in
better shape. And they just wah wah wah. Right? Now we
had a great time. We always do. And
so that then, you know, he leaves. I get sick,
and and then I miss Christmas. And I was

(05:43):
really having quite the pity party, especially on
Saturday. I just Saturday Sunday just felt
horrible. And I
saw Jamie Foxx's special on Netflix. Now
if you're a person does not enjoy cursing,
it's it's funny, but that man likes to

(06:06):
drop m f a lot. In fact, his nickname is,
Jamie m f Fox and, you
know, but it was funny. There are definitely some parts in it that were funny.
But I'm stealing this idea from him because
come Monday and really what is

(06:27):
today? Thursday. So probably Tuesday.
I am starting to feel better. And
it dawned on me then, probably
yesterday, Wednesday, I was, like, oh,
instead of having my whole body ache,
I now can feel my tennis elbow. Like, nothing

(06:50):
else really hurts except my elbow.
And I was happy to just have my
elbow where before I
was woe was me when when I'm getting old, man.
You know? And, Jamie Foxx talked
about this that he said, you know,

(07:13):
one point, he was getting mad at God. Like, why why is this happening
to me? The the, the crime doesn't
fit the punishment. And he said and and God blessed him
with a with a stroke.
And that's kinda how I feel. Like, I'm actually happy

(07:34):
now that I can I can go up and down the steps and
not everything hurts? My elbow, which is for the record kind
of getting a little better, and my knee is kind of a little better probably
because I haven't done anything for a week. But maybe that's
what I was supposed to do. But I never
would have thought of COVID as a gift, but

(07:56):
maybe this was the gift I got for Christmas was the gift of COVID
because I'm not complaining anymore about my body
because I'm like, alright. I'm back to the same crappy
state I was before this whole thing started. And
maybe now this will give me a little inspiration to,

(08:18):
maybe skip on the Dairy Queen a little and start to really
realize that your body is a gift and you
only got one. Like, I know we all think we
can go, you know, $6,000,000 man and replace
everything and inject your fat in your butt and everything else we're doing that
makes everybody look like a chipmunk. But I'm

(08:41):
not doing any of that. Can't afford any of that stuff.
And, I was like, you know what? I think COVID was kind of
a a gift in a way for me to
realize it could be a whole lot worse. You know, I always
say that on this show, it's gonna get better. And in
some cases, the way it gets better is by not getting any worse.

(09:04):
And so I just thought I would hop on here and
go, what did you get for for Christmas? I
got the gift of COVID, and it was a really, really
good gift. And so if you're in
a spot and I realized, man, the holidays are nasty
on your brain at times. You know, it's a lot of reminiscing, and that's what

(09:26):
me and my buddy were doing. We had a lot of reminiscing
and things I had not thought about in a very long time, which made me
laugh a lot. And and there is
that's powerful stuff. That's why there's so many things in
these Christmas movies that make you miss the
past. You you reminisce about these things and it's, you know,

(09:48):
pulls on your heartstrings and things like that. And that's very powerful stuff.
And I made notes. I'm like, hey, anytime you can get somebody thinking
about if if I could say something like I watched a thing on Amazon.
It was Christmas, I think, through the decades. It
was on Amazon Prime, and they had, like, the seventies. They
had Evel Knievel and the little like, the first

(10:11):
handheld electronic football game. All these things I grew up
with, and it just makes you
remember those things. And that's
powerful. The one thing was funny yesterday, last
night, my appetite, unfortunately, has come back. I
dropped £4 in 3 days. I was like, alright,

(10:34):
COVID. Maybe I just I'm gonna go around and find somebody who's sick and
just start licking them. I'm like, I need to drop some weight, but it's coming
back. And, but I, you know,
I Googled getting over COVID
thinking, oh, this could be interesting. But it did say
one of the things that grandma used to give you was chicken

(10:56):
noodle soup, and it's actually really good because of the pepper in
the broth. It opens up your nasal passages. The
the broth is good on your throat. The chicken is full of protein,
and they didn't say what the salts for, but nonetheless and so I
had not and when I say chicken noodle soup, like, I have chicken
noodle soup in the cupboard, but I found a can of, like,

(11:19):
red and white Campbell's chicken noodle, like, the kind where
you dump it in a bowl, fill up the can with water, and dump that
in, and then you nuke it for 2 and a half minutes. And I don't
know how old that I should have looked. I don't know how old this
this chicken noodle soup was because I have thing like
chunky mange chicken noodles and vegetables with rice and blah blah.

(11:41):
You know? No. This was just noodles, a half of a, you
know, a fleck of chicken in there, and a bunch of salt. And
I was amazed at the smell
and but mainly the taste. So I'm sitting in my living room
watching some bad Hallmark movie because those are easy to sleep

(12:02):
through. And the minute I
put the spoon to my mouth because I haven't had chicken
noodle soup in probably
50 nah. 45 years.
It's been a long time. It's not really one of my top things, but
it was one of those things that for me, either my mom

(12:25):
or my grandma was feeding me. And so there were
times when I would spend the night at my grandma's house
and it'd be cold out or something like that. And she'd like, here, here's some
chicken noodle soup. But the one that really got me
was as I put that spoon in my mouth, I swear
as I'm looking down, like, at the

(12:48):
noodles and stuff in this bowl, I really expected it. When we
grew up, we had these pink or black bowls
that used for cereal or whatever. In this case, chicken noodles. And I
really expected to see that bowl. It's like
I went there so incredibly strong,
you know, and I was like, wow. And I just expected, like, almost open up

(13:11):
my eyes and I would have then flipped to the other side of the
living room which used to be a sofa. Like, it just I was amazed
almost like a weird flashback, you know,
like in movies where somebody does something like, I think I'm remembering something and it's
like and I was like, wow, that was just
bizarre because it's like, I know what's going on. It's a chemical

(13:34):
that somehow stimulating something in the brain and the brain is going down
a path that it hasn't gone down in a while. But I just remember, like,
man, I am there. And I could I could see my grandma's fireplace
and the plastic on the couch, you know, all that stuff
was weird. So I'm gonna have to get me some more chicken noodle soup whether
I'm sick or not. It was good. I was like, I should eat more of

(13:57):
this. But, nonetheless,
getting a lot of interesting experiences. Right? One of
the things that ex wife number 2 and I would
say, we would get ourselves into something, And
we just look at each and go, this is gonna be a fun adventure.
And that's just the kind of way we looked at it. One that

(14:20):
was really interesting, again, kind of this time of year
was we're on the freeway. We're
we're coming home, but we're not there yet by any means.
And her truck did not have a working,
you know, right where we're going as soon as I say this, it did not

(14:41):
have a working gas meter. So you never knew how much gas
was in the car. You kinda kept tracking your brain and stuff like
that. So we're on the freeway, And we like the
engine stops and we're like, oh, crap. We know what this means. And
so luckily, there's nobody in front of me and we were coming right up to
an exit ramp. And I'm here to tell you I rolled

(15:03):
down the exit ramp, which luckily was downhill. At the bottom, there
was a a stop sign, but there wasn't much traffic there. So I get to
the bottom. There's nobody coming, so I just run the stop sign and
turn right into a gas station and then
rolled up and stopped right at the pump.
And I was like, now that was a fun adventure. That was that was

(15:25):
definitely different. And so whatever is going
on in your world around the holiday time, so I'm hoping it's good.
And, it's good to remember those old memories. Sometimes those are a little
painful, but it might just be a fun
adventure. And the gift you wanted may
not be what you thought, but it might be your

(15:47):
most treasured gift this year. So hang
in there. Until next time, it's gonna get better.