On the common cold

There are more than a hundred different rhino viruses that come under the heading of the common cold, so unless you’ve had all one hundred plus, you are always in danger of catching a cold someplace–the super market, church, school, work, the mall, the airport, wherever people gather. The cold is the perfect disease because it doesn’t kill it’s host, it only makes the host feel bad for a few days, and then it goes away. You get a runny nose, some fever, a sore throat, a few body aches, a nagging cough, but you are never in danger of dying, even when you feel like the contrary may be true. Sometimes a cold will make you feel absolutely crappy, especially at night when you want to sleep. Either the coughing keeps you awake, or the sneezing makes your ribs hurt, or you can’t blow your nose one more time or it will bleed. I think that high dosis of Vick’s work wonders, but I have no proof of that–I just think it’s right. You cough until you are blue in the face and just can’t cough anymore. You cough up nightmarish stuff that could gag a horse. If you take medicine, the cold lasts about fourteen days, and if you don’t take anything, it lasts about two weeks. Oh, people have their home remedies–vitamine C, zinc, chicken soup, hooch–of those only the hooch will make you feel better (for obvious reasons). The thing with the cold is this: you really don’t feel bad enough to stay put and stay home, which would kill the cold. No, you go out, spreading the cold from here to kingdom come, and the cold virus has a whole new world to infect. That’s why the cold is the perfect disease.