I Do Know

My body's been at odds with my spirit the past 48 hours.

I managed to get sick - a rarity for me - over a three-day weekend, so not only was I stuck in the city, but feeling sub-par. It's why I didn't make it to the afterparty last night to celebrate the success of "The Third Man" fundraiser. It's also the reason I napped the past two days and slept 11 1/2 hours last night.

As you might guess, I don't really have the temperament for being laid low, so by mid-afternoon, I swallowed some meds and was scouring the Internets for a movie to amuse me.

A film-savvy friend had told me yesterday that she was eager to see Noah Baumbach's latest work, "Mistress America," so I took that as a recommendation since I'd seen  his "While We're Young" earlier this year and really enjoyed it.

My mistake. Apparently a movie about 40-somethings exploring the lifestyles and habits of millennials (to great comedic affect) was far more to my taste than the vapid story of a friendship between a completely self-absorbed scatterbrained 30 year old and the college freshman she takes under her wing (Ignore other people! Focus on yourself constantly!).

Noah, baby, I know Greta Gerwig is your love and muse, but as a member of the audience, sometimes she's the most annoying person on the planet to watch and listen to. Non-stop verbal diarrhea doesn't help, either. I'm fine with dysfunctional characters but these were just pretentious assholes.

So while the movie wasn't anything I'd recommend, it got me out of the house and killed a couple of hours without unduly taxing my compromised physiology.

But then you get out of the movie, it's still Labor Day, everyone's doing something fun but you and you realize you've barely eaten today (proof positive you're not feeling like yourself), so you do the only logical thing: Go to Cookout for the first time.

So it wasn't cooked in a friend's backyard. It's still a burger and lemonade on Labor Day and that feels right.

I'd taken two bites driving long before being stopped at a red light. A man with a sign that began, "I bet you don't know..." walks up to my open passenger-side car window before I can even finish reading his message.

Happy Labor Day, I tell him before offering him my lemonade. Without missing a beat, he immediately takes a big draw on the straw. You can have my burger, too, I say, handing it out the window with the two bites missing, not sure if he'll accept partially-eaten food.

"Bless you, bless you," he says, almost bowing. Before he makes it back to the curb, he's already chomping through the burger.

As it turns out, two bites was about all I really wanted anyway. And, who knows, maybe that blessing will have me back in glowing health sooner.

Honestly, I'm feeling better already.