I had a conversation this week with one of my closest friends - I will call him, El Heffe. For no other reason than this is what he'd like call himself.

Here are a few snippets of the conversation I had with El Heffe on the phone the other day. He is home sick, and as he's a farmer, he's NEVER HOME SICK:

On the illness he has right now:
EH: I feel like death. I really might die. Went to the doctor and he says I have an viral infection. It's taken over the right side of my head! It's in my nose, my ears, my throat, my mouth. MY MOUTH! I have canker sores in the back of my throat! I was sitting at the table the other night and my friend said, "Quit whining. It's just a canker sore". I told him I'd show him, so he started to lean across the table and I said, "Not necessary. You'll see it from there!" and he did. He sucked in his breath, even. Nasty thing. It's huge. It's in the back of my throat.
Me: Are you eating?
EH: Of course I'm eating. Everything tastes like cardboard and mustard, but I'm eating.

On the illness and the shit-storm that came with it:
EH: And then, I had to crap. Oh man, did I have to crap!! I got up at 1:30 in the morning and sat on the toilet until 9:30 that morning.
Me: Oh God. That's bad.
EH: Water, just fluid. I don't know where the hell that shit - if that's what you want to call it - was coming from. I probably could have shit through a keyhole and not touched metal on either side.

On the farmhouse he grew up in (old, built in the 1800's):
EH: So the guy that owned that house finally did some renovations to it. When they tore out the walls, there were ... in some places ... 3.5' to 6' high piles of bat guano! BAT SHIT, HDW!! I told my mom that this is why I was sick so much growing up. I was breathing in fucking bat shit! And they had these nasty red bugs, too.
Me: The bats?
EH: Yeah, the bats!! Ever seen bed bugs? Probably not. Because if you have, you'd know these fuckers are scarier than those. They're red, big, flat, but they're HAIRY! Sonofabitches. They bit my mom, they bit my dad, and they should have bitten my asshole brother more, but they didn't bite me, fuckers. I wouldn't take a thing with me when I moved out. I didn't want those fuckers coming to my new house.

On bees:

EH: Did I tell you about the bees? I told my mom and dad for years that I heard bees in the walls of that house. No one believed me. I had dreams they'd come through the walls. Turns out, when they were fixing up that house later, they took off the siding of the house on that east side. I SHIT YOU NOT. There was a honeycomb running from the very top to the bottom, all two plus stories. Millions of bees. It was impressive. They had a bee keeper come out to move them out, which he did. He tried to give us some honey. I didn't want a part of that. Those fuckers gave me bad dreams. Keep that shit away from me!!