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At first, I thought it was allergies. Although I've never been diagnosed as being allergic to anything (other than work and boiled okra, of course), I was convinced that pollen was the reason I have been sneezing, coughing, sniffling and feeling light-headed for the past few weeks.
This conclusion was brought on by peer pressure. An extraordinary number of people I've talked to recently are complaining about how pollen is making them miserable during the day and unable to sleep at night. They are suffering more this year than usual, they tell me, and the dry, windy weather has made it worse.
After I acknowledged that I shared some of those symptoms, none hesitated to label me as a fellow sufferer. It appears misery does love company, after all.
But after a couple of weeks, aches and chills and fatigue joined the list of maladies. Then it dawned on me: This was a cold, common or otherwise.
I actually was relieved. Not having allergies was a blessing, I rationalized. 'Tis far, far better to have a cold, a temporary affliction that may or may not come around once a year and is spread by good old germs, not tiny, flora-induced, air particles that guarantee every spring will give me a nasal twang in the key of Freddy Fender.
Then, in my usual snail's-pace fashion of scientific deduction, I remembered there really isn't much you can do about a cold. Allergy sufferers can take pills or lock themselves in the house with the windows closed and not breathe. That's easy. But if you have a cold, all you can do is go into denial, infect your co-workers and then surrender to its inevitable torment.
In the meantime, you are obligated to listen to everyone's advice about how to get better. The remedies are like fingerprints, each one gloriously different and impossible to decipher without the aid of a computer. Consider this sampling of treatments my learned friends prescribed:
Take a cold shower, jump in bed, pile on the quilts and sweat it out.
Take a hot shower, jump in bed, pile on the quilts and sweat it out.
Take three aspirin, a tablespoon of honey, suck a lemon, drink two fingers of whiskey, jump into bed and pile on the quilts. (Sweating is optional, but you won't care if you don't.)
Drink nothing but tea and water.
Don't eat any fruit, especially citrus.
Eat nothing but fruit, especially citrus, and drink nothing but water.
Subsist on the Three Cs: chicken soup, vitamin C and cough drops.
Exercise.
Don't exert yourself.
You get the idea.
As much as I appreciate my friends' suggestions, I think it's time to do something drastic and irrational, such as call in the government.
President George W. Bush wants to spend a hundred gazillion dollars to explore Mars. Now, I liked Star Trek and Alf as much as the next guy, but this is a bad idea. If we had already solved all the problems here on Earth and if we had a mountain of money left over, then I'd be all for finding out if there once was a place for green catfish to swim on Mars.
But instead of blowing our hard-earned taxes to orbit the Red Planet, maybe we ought to blow some of it on our noses.
Lots of people who are a whole lot smarter than I have speculated that the president trotted out his space fantasy just to secure a few votes during an election year. Some of those same people have alleged that the war with Iraq was steeped in a similar self-serving purpose.
I'll let others argue about that.
But if Bush wants to guarantee re-election, he should tackle a problem everyone can relate to:
Declare a Cold War.
Then pile on the quilts.
No sweat.
- Jeff Webb is editor of editorials for the Hernando Times.