Diplomatic Immunity

I got caught in the downpour on Saturday when I was returning home in a rick. You know how these things are - nothing on the sides to shield you. So by the time I reached home, my arms were completely wet, my skirt was damp from the rain splashing on the seats, and I was shivering like a malariac (nice word, what) from the icy coldness of it all.
Well, there's more - I was running a raging fever by nightfall, with a headache as intense as Irrfan Khan in Maqbool. How I suffered! But trust my mom to burst my injured bubble. "I thought only kids got fever from the rain", she said. "Don't you have any immunity at all?" Since it was a rhetorical question, I ignored it. Not that I wasn't prepared for her reaction. It's always been this way, right since adolescence. My sister and I learned to defend our illnesses with great valour, and always wore her down in the end, when she was forced to be the Florence owl (never nightingale!). To be fair, I must say we even caught a worried frown on her face from time to time.
But this was clearly not one of those times.
She refused to come visit me unless I absolutely needed her! Ha!