Travel tip: If you're flying U.S. Airways from New York to L.A. and decide you'd rather stop in Albuquerque mid-flight, just take off all your clothes.

This is the second morning in a row that I have suffered my ordinarily monthly ocular migraine. Both mornings the coffee was strong and I woke up about 45 minutes earlier than usual. So tomorrow: sleep in and no coffee. I get the OM about once a month, and I have to stop whatever I'm doing for about twenty minutes because I go mostly blind. I've had it for years and there's no explaining it, like the various other random physical anomalies I suffer. The thing about the ocular migraine is that its accompanying headache is slight, so it's not a terribly painful experience, but my vision blurs and fuzzes like bad pixels on an LCD screen, and suddenly I can't read or walk and I am forced to lean back in a chair, stare off into space, and wait for it to pass while passersby think I'm being lazy or meditating selfishly. The worst is when I'm driving down the freeway and suddenly, uh-oh, gotta pull over. Also, my vision always blurs out to blindness in a star and crescent shape, so, yes, there is a Muslim extremist conspiracy to literally mess with my head going on here.

Well, I suppose everybody's got their something. Mrs. Ditchman, for example, sometimes gets the true migraine which is a wholly immobilizing pain that renders her face down in bed. It's awful to watch. She carries around Excedrin Migraine, which she says is the only thing that does the trick, if she can catch it early. Interestingly, Excedrin Migraine is laced with caffeine, which I was supposing was one of the factors that was causing the OM, so go figure.

Who knows why we're burdened with such things. In my case, it happens and it's as if the finger of God reaches down and clips you right in the Achilles. God sayeth, "Whoa, kid. Stop for a bit. I'm here, you're there. Don't forget it." And so I do. I know I'm lucky, because it's not too painful, but others get it differently. It's one of the questions I'm gonna ask The Boss in the celestial performance review; why some people get fair bodies and others don't. Of course, I already know what the answer's gonna be: "Whoa, kid. Mind your own."

But I'm gonna ask Him anyway.




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