The Sickly Urbanist

Tiny carbon footprint. Huge facial tissue footprint.

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You really get the chance to contemplate your life while sick with a gnarly headcold. Far too much of a chance. If you're like me this takes place on the tissue-strewn couch between a nap and another episode of Wild China (you are very concerned about megafauna right now). You ponder your role in the universe (miniscule), your ability to change troubling world events (nonexistent), and your record of making life better for others (dubious).

Still, in one way you're clearly better for the world today: no drive to work, no using finite oil resources and releasing carbon into the environment. You pat your shoulder, which triggers a bout of coughing. Best to stay in a neutral position.

Urbanists walk and bicycle, and so would you if it were not a snowy windstorm out there. If your body had chosen to rebel on a balmy day in June, you could walk to a park, relax on a bench, and engage in friendly ballet-of-the-sidewalk conversation with passersby. You could walk to the library and continue your brave expedition through the New Books section. You could bicycle to the ice cream shop and, if your budgeting app approves, purchase a cone. You may even compel your spouse to engage in a gentle game of frisbee on that lot whose sign has declared an impending development for years but is functionally a dog park. If it were warm, and if you had a charming porch swing or hammock, you could watch the sun set on it, kleenex box in hand, as the children scramble to get in before the blink of the streetlights.

But alas, people like you get sick in winter, when bicycling is an extreme sport, walking requires an additional penumbra of insulated clothing, parks are vacant and littered with snowdrift detritus, ice cream unthinkable, frisbee laughable, and porch swings both unappetizing and requiring a porch. Oh, and your block is home to maybe two children, who certainly aren't on the schedule of the streetlights that were installed five months ago.

The library, though, that's still on the table. You ponder the extent to which your sick day delayed global warming and pile on your warm outerwear. No viral infection can hold this urbanist back!