Road Apples by Tim Sanders
March 14, 2011

What I did on my week off

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Last week I was perusing Scott’s editor’s note above my column. “Listen to this and tell me what you think,” I said to Marilyn:


“Our esteemed humorist is taking the week off. This Road Apples column originally ran in the Feb. 8, 2010 edition.”


“I think that if ‘a steamed humorist’ is anything like ‘a baked ham,’ then you’d fit the bill.

“Not that part,” I said. “I mean the part about me taking the week off.”
“You did,” she replied. “You were sick.”

“SICK? I was at death’s door, woman! Calling last week’s sojourn in the Valley of the Shadow of Death ‘a week off’ just doesn’t capture the flavor of the thing. I could hear the fluttering of angels’ wings!”

“Take my word for it, dear, when you do finally arrive at death’s door, angels’ wings will be the least of your worries. What you had was a cold.”

“You have no idea. You weren’t the one who–” I stopped myself, but not in time.
“I’m not the one who ... who what? You came down with your cold on a Saturday, and by Tuesday I’d caught it too. Don’t tell me I have no idea!”


She was right, of course. Not only had she been taking care of me for a week, but she’d been fighting the same virus I was. Granted, it was only the minor, feminine version, but it was still no fun for her. While we were both battling the deadliest virus since Bubonic Plague, I was able to give the common (or in this case, uncommon) cold some serious thought. Here’s what I’ve learned:


• CATCH A COLD? “Catching a cold” is a misnomer. Human beings are ponderous mammals, and even armed with tennis shoes and state-of-the-art GPS devices, we are not fast enough to catch a cold germ. If you need proof of this, pick a day when you have nothing to do and say to yourself: “I believe I shall go out and catch myself a cold today.” I’ll guarantee you that when you get home that evening, all worn out from pursuing the elusive cold germ, you still won’t have caught him. No, he’ll sneak up on you and catch you several days later when you least expect it.


• DOCTORS’ OFFICES - Oddly enough, the very best place to contract the dreaded cold germ is your doctor’s office. That is because when other people get sick, that is where they go. Most of them are breathing while sitting in that waiting room. Breathing and coughing and wheezing and sneezing and touching things.


• HORNK vs. FREEP - The male cold, which is the more serious of the two main varieties, starts with sneezing and eventually results in deep, wracking coughs which start in your toenails and work their way up through your digestive tract and pulmonary system, rattling each and every organ and all of the change in your pocket until the familiar HORNK occurs. The female cold, on the other hand, often results in an eerie FREEP noise, which will convince the unsuspecting husband to leap from his bed of pain in order to investigate what sounds like a wounded chicken in the kitchen but is in reality only his wife, coughing. Both varieties, of course, result in you and your spouse lying in bed, making barnyard fowl noises well into the night. And all of the HORNKING and FREEPING is a precursor to:


• PHLEGM - Phlegm was originally brought to America by the Phlegmish people, who were Dutch and harvested it from Phlegm trees in the Netherlands. Nothing will help you appreciate a bad cold like a few gallons of phlegm. Have no fear, you will not run out.


• COUGH DROPS or COUGH SYRUP? - With cough syrup you won’t have to worry about falling asleep and inhaling that half-melted cough drop. On the other hand, if your cough syrup contains too much codeine, you may wake up in the middle of the night and convince yourself that the innocent sock dangling from your house slipper is actually a ring-tailed lemur chasing you into the bathroom.


• LAST WORDS - If you are a journalist, or even if you aren’t, at some point, when your cold is at its very worst, you will start scribbling lines on a notepad near your bed. That is because you’ve always wanted to rise up from your pillow and say something moving and memorable just before you wheeze your last breath. Words like “I die that France may live,” or “Tis a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done,” or “Tell the boys to go out there and win one for the Gipper” come to mind. I wrote out several likely lines, but the constant coughing made them all illegible, and when I attempted to memorize a couple of them later I couldn’t make heads or tails out of them. I finally gave up the notion, knowing that with my luck my last words would probably be something embarrassing like either “Get that damned cat out from under the bed,” or “Don't blame me, it was all that cabbage I had for dinner.”
 

It’s been two weeks now. Both my wife and I are still coughing, and wheezing, and HORNKING and FREEPING, but the volume has subsided, and the dog is only barking at us now, not with us. That is a good sign.