[Magdalen] Prayer Request for my old friend

[M J _Mike_ Logsdon]

>>>To be perfectly truthful, when I stopped to think it through there was a certain mild value judgment on my part attached to the use of the word "sickly" (sometimes it feels as though they're trying to "out-hypochondriac" one another).  However, it really was an offhand, almost inadvertent use of the word at the time, expressing sympathy, I thought, for the amount of time they both seemed to be laid up.<<<

My take on this is, regardless of whether or not you were expressing a mild value judgment, and whether or not they have a "thing" for being sick (sic), anyone who counts you as a friend (and they presumably do) should be able to easily see that your use of what many today would call an archaism in such a context was meant, at the very least, good-naturedly, and since you do live in such close proximity to them (same house), sympathetically, as you say.  My guess is they either have a sensitivity to "sickly"'s very slim connection to "elderly" (young people can be sickly), or a sensitivity to their potential "tendency" for being sick "frequently" (what you say sometimes seems to be the case).  At the very least, avoid such terms, I suppose, or maybe even attempt to avoid even noticing their sickliness.  (But being a caring person, the latter might seem quite hard to do.)

All this said by someone who's been fighting a cold since before Thanksgiving, and only THIS CURRENT WEEKEND feeling halfway decent for the first time.  So, please, call me sickly.  And considering how I passed the sometimes-threshold for "senior status" 1.5 years ago, please, call me aged and infirm as well, if you please'm!