Sorry, you’ll have to excuse me. I’m moving a little slow right not. I think I have a cold.
Medical experts say that every year you live your chances of getting the common cold go down just a bit as you build your immunity cold by cold. So, by the time you are elderly you have very little chance (statistically speaking) of getting the common cold. This means you may have crippling immobility, dementia and bowel issues, but hey, no colds!
Since I have had kids my head cold quotient has ticked up ten fold. The moment I hear a sniffle or spy a little dripping of their noses and I know that I’m in for it in roughly three or four days. If I have two or more colds in short succession I’m sure to get a sinus infection. A sinus infection is like having a three week hangover without involving any alcohol.
If you and I are in the same space for even a millisecond and you have a cold, I will most likely get it. It could be a sporting event like the Superbowl. You may be sitting in field level seats I may be located in the nose bleed section (or the nose drip section), but if you and I pass in the concourse on our separate ways to buy popcorn and hotdogs I will most likely catch your cold.
I don’t mean to say that I’m sickly or anything else like that, it’s just that I’m friendly. I like people too much. If I were to become a hermit and cloister myself off from the world then I would most likely have fewer colds. My wife, Special Sauce Caldwell (so named because she makes everything just a little better) is a teacher, and after many years in the classroom has built up the immunity of a water buffalo. (I’m told they have high immunity levels, or maybe that was a Scotsman and whiskey tolerance.) It’s not that I ever desire my beautiful wife to get the colds that my two girls and I get. It’s just we’re constantly amazed that the three of us can pass a cold back and forth with the speed of a ping pong ball at the Olympics while somehow she sails above the germs and viruses in a fortress of good genes and Superman-like immunity.
Oh wait, stop the presses. (I’ve always wanted to say that!) It turns out that I don’t have a cold at all! I’ve got the seasonal allergies, commonly known as hay fever (even though the spring variety comes from trees and not from hay). That explains the yellow stuff on my windshield that I keep drawing smiley faces in. I thought it was just a strange kind of yellow snow.
Now don’t get me wrong, I like trees. I’m all for trees. I am firmly pro-tree. It’s just I wish we could cut them all down.
Well, maybe that’s going too far. Maybe we could just move the trees. I hear there are de-forested parts of the earth in need of root systems to stem soil erosion and the Dust Bowl. Maybe these places would like the trees in my back yard. They can have them if they would like to come and get them. There must be a Craig’s List category for this type of transaction.
I’m going too far? Perhaps. Maybe we could just bag the trees for two weeks every spring and all the Goldenrod for two weeks in the fall. I love these two plants every other time of the year. But when I’m hiking through the back fields near my home and I come across a patch of Golden Rod in the late summer, before they turn into the evil spawns of Satan in the fall, I think to myself “these plant’s are gorgeous. I’m sure glad they are here to liven up the scenery on my walk-about. Now where did I put that flame-thrower?”
Or perhaps I could just spend two weeks at sea in the spring and two weeks in the fall. That wouldn’t be a tough sell to my wife at all. (“Honey, I’m going to spend our emergency fund on a two-week cruise this spring. I don’t want to go to the Bahamas or Trinidad and Tobago, but I have to! It’s for the good of the family!”)
Actually, I’ve put in an order for one of those Bio Domes. It should be coming any day now. Stop by for a visit sometime. It only takes an hour to go through the de-contaminating doorway process and you will just love the cotton-free, plastic pajamas and slippers you will have to wear while you visit.
Oh, and you brought me a housewarming gift! It’s a plant for my window? Thanks so much!
Put it right here in the furnace!
