I am single. Yet, everyday, I eat, live and sleep with a partner who is loving, caring, irritating, over protective and over-reacts most of the time. It’s a love-hate, toxic relationship that we share. But, without him, I would be dead, quite literally. He is none other than Mr Immunity.
Immunity protects me from getting killed by highly jobless microscopic beings that try to invade my body.
Take any movie in which Earth is invaded by aliens, and a Human army is formed, and defeats them. That’s precisely what a battle between immunity and microorganisms would look like, if it were made into a movie. Unfortunately, all we have are boring textbooks describing the process in intricate detail, rendering it utterly boring and sleep-inducing. But that’s a different story altogether.
Like any life form, or army, Immunity too has his own qualities, traits, feelings and maybe even a personality. He is, after all, a bunch of cells working together.(it’s much more complicated than that, but let’s not dwell on the details)
Let’s look at some of the qualities and feelings which I observed in Immunity, because, why should Pixar Animation Studios have all the fun?
Mr. Nice guy: This guy keeps me alive. The whole invasion-battle-victory story? Yup, that’s this fellow.
Confusion (missing member of the ‘Inside out’ cast): This guy is a newbie and may have trouble differentiating between enemies and colleagues, and ends up injuring both. Casualties are usually limited. But it’s fine since he gets fired at the very first mistake; the human body makes a mean boss.
The Overprotective and Overreacting Guy: Everyone knows what an interaction between a dog and a postman looks like. It’s really funny to watch, provided, you are neither the dog, nor the postman. When your body takes on the role of the postman, and your immunity, the frenzied dog, comedy morphs into horror, and voilà ! An allergic reaction is born; you end up sneezing your lungs out or scratching your skin off because of tiny, invisible particles which were aimlessly floating in the air (before they decided to land on you). This is, of course, hysterical for the person watching you sneeze and scratch to a rhythm audible only to you.
‘Tasmanian devil’ Mode On: The fault in our genes, environment, food; anything and everything. When things go wrong in our body, Mr. Immunity crosses over to the dark side, and becomes Autoimmunity.
This guy has had it with his insane boss (human body/us), is fed up, and will destroy anything and everything in his path, be it his family members, or himself. This guy is usually out of control and can’t be stopped easily. And if you try practicing pest control with steroids or similar medicines, it’s you who will suffer, as Mr. Immunity, too, gets annihilated. But if you don’t stop Autoimmunity, you will still suffer. Autoimmunity gifts you the pleasure of suffering helplessly.
When you’re sick, you miss him, but when you get allergies, you wish he would just disappear. You don’t feel safe when with him, but, will definitely be unsafe without him. You and Immunity; it’s tough love indeed.
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