Cartoon courtesy FunnyJunk.

I got the short end of the stick genetics-wise. I have a plethora of health problems that cause frequent issues that can be more than a bit frustrating.

Without boring you with the details, I get very sick very easily. As a child, it was much worse than it is now. It was fairly common for me to miss weeks, sometimes months, of school at a time due to illness.

As I write this, I am at home, sick with pneumonia. I’ve been ordered at least a week in bed and to rejoin the world slowly when my fever finally comes down. Doesn’t sound like much fun, right?

Growing up, there was some envy in my classmates — especially in elementary school — for how much school I “got” to miss. The prevailing idea seemed to be that being home sick meant staying home and having fun all day.

I still see this mindset in college, though it’s less frequent.

I’ve even caught myself thinking it when days are long and to-do lists are longer. It can be easy to start wishing I could take a sick day and just do nothing. I get the same urge to fake sick and play hooky as any other college student does.

I’ve never faked being sick, though.

Maybe I’m jaded from all the comments I got in school about faking it as a kid — I certainly didn’t look diseased — –or maybe it’s because I don’t want to risk jeopardizing my word’s value.

I won’t lie, I’ve played hooky before — mostly as a freshman  — and I think it’s a valuable part of being a college student.

Not only does it teach us about instant gratification, but it also teaches us about consequences. But playing sick is something I’ve never done.

I’ve never thought of being sick as something that can be “played.” There is nothing fun about having no choice over when your body decides you need to sleep or how long your cough will keep you up at night.

Sure, there’s a lot of T.V. and gaming, but it isn’t the same.

When I’m healthy and I’m playing games, I’m beating previous high scores or trying out new character choices. When I’m sick, it becomes something with which to pass the time between sleep. It isn’t fun. Though it does keep me from going insane from cabin fever though.

To give you an idea of what I mean, I logged the time I spent doing things on Sunday, the day after I was diagnosed with pneumonia in urgent care.

I spent a half hour emailing bosses, teachers and play directors. I spent four hours playing games. I spent a half hour eating and taking medication.

This was all broken up into bits of five minutes here, 10 minutes there. For those of you keeping count, that’s five hours of activity total. What did I do for the rest of the 19 hours? Sleep.

That’s a fairly typical day of being home sick when you’re me. Those five hours on other days can vary from reading, to doing some homework, to keeping my mother from worrying too much.

Being sick isn’t the same as taking a day off to relax.

A day off to relax — or play hooky — is a day where you stop worrying and do something fun. It’s a day to tell your to-do lists to go jump in a lake while you sit on a beach.

A day out sick is a day that you spend trying to get back on your feet after having them cut out from under you. It isn’t a vacation, and it isn’t fun.

Maybe I’m whining too much. Actually, I probably am just whining at this point.

But there is nothing to envy here — unless you like coughing up ungodly amounts of phlegm.

I guess the moral of the story here is to wash your hands, get your flu shot and take care of yourself. Sick days are no fun, but they don’t have to plague us all.

Kjerstine Trooien is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected].