By Wendy Litner

The notion of survival of the fittest terrifies me.  My fear isn’t of the theological kind, borne out of any deeply held belief in the dogmas of creationism, but rather it is because I am just not very fit.  When learning about the Bubonic plague and other historical human disasters, I have always been certain that I would have been one of the first to go.   In fact, my picture likely would have made it into the textbooks as figure 1.1,  an ‘extreme case.’   It’s as if I was made with cheap, foreign parts in the eighties that have since been ubiquitously banned by international health authorities in the new millennium.  As a result of my sub-par constitution I generally have the immune system of a gnat, even suffering from seasonal allergies, in every single season.  According to my allergist, I am allergic to trees.  As a species. 

That I am going to get the swine flu this season is therefore a certainty and it seems particularly unfair as I have recently become a vegetarian.  Notwithstanding my dietary allegiance to the pig, that bug is gunning for my poor asthmatic lungs, I just know it.  I intend to stand in line for the shot just as soon as the high priority patients have been treated but am convinced they will run out of the vaccine just as soon as I get to the front of the line.  My luck is typically as good as my immune system. 

This flu frenzy has confirmed my childhood fears that natural selection, if given the chance, would pick me last to be on its gym class dodgeball team.  But as I am on heightened alert for flu like symptoms, I begin to wonder: why do I have to wait for natural selection to pick me?  Why can’t I be captain of my own awesome team?  With plenty of vitamin C and a conscious effort to stay calm, maybe, just maybe, I can put a couple of points on the scoreboard and keep H1N1 at bay.  After all, doesn’t everyone love an underdog story?