I feel like I am in a Geico commercial but instead of a wad of cash with eyes staring at me, I see a sickly pig as I hear “Sometimes I feel like…somebody’s watching me.” Everywhere I turn there it is, the swine watching me, stalking me and taunting me.

Within the past week, my cousin from Indiana came to visit the family and started complaining of a nasty cough and fever. The next day she was in the hospital with the swine flu or H1N1 if that’s what you feel like calling it today. The next day her sister (my other cousin) and her fiancée both came down with it. Two days later one of the kids in my wife’s home daycare caught the nasty virus. It’s written on the wall and it wants me and my family!

I am now paranoid. Everyone who sneezes, everyone who coughs and everyone who looks in my direction is a suspect. Unlike our trusty law enforcement…everyone is considered guilty until proven innocent…or…non swine ridden at least. If I wash my hands in the bathroom and have to open the door do I drape a tissue over my hand and resort to psychopathic OCD tactics? How do I know these tissues are in fact sterile? How do I know some sadistic bastard with swine flu at the Kleenex factory is not going through all the Kleenex boxes at the factory contaminating each tissue and laughing to himself as he tries to rid the world of healthy people?

At work I am on my toes or on the lookout for piggy syndrome. If a co-worker wants to converse with me…they had better call me on the phone and keep their damn dirty distance. Mamma didn’t raise no fool. I aint’ going to go around co-mingling with the potentially infected. Shake my hand…over my dead body you bastards. My bosses want to meet with me about an upcoming project in the conference room Monday and assuming I am still alive…should I brave the conditions and take the risk? Do I tell them to break out their webcams and we can do the damn thing via video? I already have my suspicions about them…I see the way they hide their cough and secretly wipe their snouts. I am on to you…you’ll never catch me alive!

At home my wife’s daycare is a breeding ground of sickness and viruses of all sorts of shapes and colors. I keep an eye out for the infamous piggy at all hours of the day and night. I thought I heard an oink coming from the closet last night and then suddenly my youngest daughter started coughing. Coincidence? I think not. You damn dirty PIG!

I proposed my wife close down the home day care for a minimum of six months just to make sure everyone was healthy by the time they come back and since this is a medical shut-down, I believe all parents of the children should still mail us our weekly fee. My wife isn’t buying into my precautions…it is quite sad. Instead the infected will infect us and cause sickness and pain, we will merge with the pig and become swine. I am what I eat and Monday I had pork. Is it karma?

Wish me luck…I must prepare for my battle with the evil pig!