Flu season is around the corner, and I want to lock myself in a sanitized safe away from all of the potential disease-carriers.

Whenever autumn approaches, I’m triggered and remember terrible scenes of my fellow classmates coughing with­out any barrier between their mouths and the healthy world. Even worse, I recall the experience of seeing a man sneeze in his hands and then open a door with those same hands. Truly tragic.

This situation’s terribleness is ampli­fied by 10 if you have lectures with 100- plus people because it is inevitable that someone will get germs all over their faces and hands. You might as well quar­antine them before their class is over.

When I was younger, my mom would jokingly call me her “little hypochon­driac,” and it wasn’t for no reason. On countless occasions I would come to my mom or dad stating that I knew I had contracted a sickness of some sort.

Like I briefly mentioned in my pre­vious letter from the editor, I thought I had appendicitis every week or so. My suspicion had struck me after a boy in my neighborhood was picked up in an ambulance in the middle of the night for that very affliction.

I asked my parents what happened to him and they told me the boy’s appen­dix needed to get taken out. Thus, the appendicitis seed was planted in my brain. The funny thing is, I didn’t even know what an appendix was, but for all I cared, it was the key to my demise.

This instance wasn’t my only case of paranoia, and I honestly don’t know how many cases there are. There’s probably a whole warehouse dedicated to the times I thought I was sick with something I wasn’t.

Another example of my supposed hypochondria was when I saw a trailer for “My Sister’s Keeper” on TV, and for a week afterwards I thought every ache in my body was due to cancer. I was a little dramatic to say the least.

However, in my defense there were some times that something I had con­tracted was worse than it seemed. For example, I was bedridden one day and my mom was sure that it was just a cold, but it ended up being pneumonia. However, with a shot in the butt and a pat on the head, I was fine in a few weeks.

I grew out of my paranoia a little bit, but I seemed to be a little inattentive to my body’s warning signs. Once I thought I had a cold and I insisted that I should go to school, but my dad told me to stroll over to the doctor instead.

I didn’t protest and went along my merry way, even though my dad told me I looked like hell. I ended up having strep, so I suppose I need to find a bal­ance between ignoring the sniffles and imagining the pain.

One thing is certain, and that is that my parents are treasures. Having a daughter that thought she was going to die every other week must have been a little tiring.

So if there is a moral lesson to learn from this mindless story, it’s this: please respect yourself and other hypochondri­acs by getting a flu shot. I didn’t protest and went along my merry way, even if my dad told me I looked like hell. I ended up having Strep, so I suppose I need to find a balance between ignoring the sniffles and imag­ining the pain.

One thing is certain, and that is that my parents are treasures. Having a daughter that thought she was going to die every other week must have been a little tiring.

So if there is a moral lesson to learn from this mindless story, it’s this: please respect yourself and other hypochondri­acs by getting a flu shot.