My past few days have been spent in a daze. The world around me seems to spin slowly, kaleidoscopically, as I stagger about. My head aches with thunder and I have begun to mutter indecipherable musings to persons around me both real and imagined. My nose is Rudolph-red and my eyes water uncontrollably-invisible onions seemingly everywhere. Passersby on the streets look at me and shake their heads, convinced I was wrecked on drinks or drugs-or both.
Hoo-boy, don't I wish. Actually, I am suffering from a particularly nasty cold virus, which feels just like having gone on a three-day tequila bender, but without the precious memories.
The common cold is a bastard of a virus: It renders you absolutely miserable, yet not quite sick enough to garner any major sympathy in anyone. Beset with one, you can slog into work or class, looking absolutely wretched from the virus, and people will ask what is wrong, fearing the worst. Of course, as soon as you tell them you have something as mundane as a cold, you're merely given a condescending \aw, poor baby,"" before they leave you to ooze in the corner.
It was the same way when you were younger. Wake up with a fever or stomach pains, and your mom would insist that you stay home from school, heralding a magical day spent drinking 7-Up and exploring the mysterious realm of daytime television. Colds, despite transforming you into a miserable runny-nosed little chipmunk, were judged not quite grave enough to warrant a day off, and so you were hurried out to the bus with a pocket full of eucalyptus cough drops and a heart full of broken spirits.
As long as we're on this subject, it has come to my attention that a great many women are under the impression that men are overly melodramatic and-dare I say-whiny, when stricken with colds. This is, of course, erroneous: Men merely suffer from colds that are more powerful than the ones women get. Or at least this is what I care to tell myself so as not to emasculate myself any more than is necessary. These super-colds also have unusual after-effect symptoms, such as an inability to properly wash the dishes and a strange compulsion to find another male and dare each other back and forth to eat increasingly inedible things.
So, my fellow cold sufferers, what's to be done to gain us the sympathy we so rightfully deserve? I think I have hit the jackpot. Instead of telling people that you have a cold, tell them you have the flu. Sounds a bit more menacing, eh? Particularly since no one's ever quite sure what ""the flu"" entails. Actually, according to Wikipedia, the flu has essentially the same symptoms of a cold, only worse. And, since Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia with articles written and edited entirely by nonprofessional users and not subject to any real kind of fact-checking before posting, you know it's got to be true.
So tell everyone you have the flu. The article I read wasn't terribly specific on how bad cold symptoms have to be in order to constitute the flu, but feel free to give yourself a worse case scenario self-diagnosis. There is no cure for the common cold, after all; there is only the balm of sympathy. Which is much nicer than eucalyptus cough drops any day.
Justin Zyduck actually loves Wikipedia.org and shouldn't have taken that cheap shot at it. E-mail him at morrisonbass@yahoo.com to complain.
