Letters to the President #1088: 'Keeping well on the trail'

Reporter's Note: I’m back in town after a trip out to the campaign trail, and the president is no doubt headed there again himself. I’m sure the staff will make sure he gets my letters.

Dear Mr. President,

Well, I’ve done it again. I’ve gone on the road, shorted myself on sleep for a week, and now have a bit of a cold. Heaven knows how I hate it when this happens. I have a million things I need to do, a million more that I would like to do, and now I’m sniffling all the way home. (Perhaps a million is an exaggeration, but you get the point.)

I woke up around 5:30 this morning to catch an early plane back to DC, and when I wasn’t dozing in the air I was fighting sneezes and blowing my nose incessantly. Luckily the plane had only a couple dozens passengers. I was not too close to anyone, so you won’t have to call the Centers for Disease Control to report a possible outbreak.

If I can just get a couple of decent, full nights of sleep I’m sure I’ll be much better, but in the meantime I suffer.

How do you avoid such things? I realize you have a doctor who pretty much chases you around like a golden retriever, but if I were keeping your schedule I think I’d be constantly run down and verging on illness. It wouldn’t be so much the work as the worry.

“Aghhh!”
“Honey, what’s wrong? You were dreaming!”
“Oh my gosh, I was at dinner with Biden. Suddenly I noticed that the waiter was Kim Jong Un, and he was serving prawns that looked like little nuclear warheads!”

That’s what it would be like for me. Anyway, how do you deal with the schedule? Come to think of it, how does any President? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one toting a box of tissues. Extra vitamin C? Green tea? Let me know, because as the election revs up I’m sure we’ll run into each other on the trail, and I’d hate to be sniffling. Ha!

Regards,
Tom