Just what, exactly, is the evolutionary purpose of the common cold? Or the ‘flu? 

I asked myself that last month, because of course, I had a cold. Well, actually, what I said was: “Oh God, why me?” while passed out on the couch, but it sounds so much more philosophical the first way. 

Seriously though, just what is the point of a cold? One theory I’ve heard is that it’s “Nature’s way of telling you to slow down.” Baloney. First of all, this theory is usually offered up by those irritatingly cheerful and healthy people who go on to say that they never get colds. “Never been sick a day in my life,” they say. These are the types of people who also say things like “Say, did I mention I finally mastered Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony while obtaining my black belt in Aikido last week before my finals in astrophysics?”

Secondly, I fail to see why Nature would be interested in telling you to slow down anyway. Personally, I believe it would be far more useful if Nature handed you a bottle of sun screen and one way ticket to Fiji. Somehow a couple of weeks on the beach seems far more restful than having your oxygen supply cut off by a stuffed up nose. 

Dealing with a cold or the flu is always so much fun. There are the obvious drawbacks: runny nose, sneezing, coughing, or if you have it really bad, the fever, throwing up, and the body aches that make you feel as though you’ve been dragged behind a pickup truck on a gravel road for half a kilometre.

Then there are the problems associated with finding the right medicine. A trip to the drug store reveals a bewildering array of cough syrups, sinus pills, and pain tablets. All of which have warning labels which read: “Do not take this product if you have heart Disease, fuzzy eyebrows, high blood pressure, thyroid disease, if your Aunt Mabel once stubbed her left toe, glaucoma, asthma, chronic lung disease, red or blonde hair, prostate gland enlargement or if you suspect you’ve been abducted by aliens in the past five years.”

Well-meaning friends and associates are no use either. If I’d followed all the advice I’d received in the last two weeks, I’d be on a permanent chicken noodle soup IV drip, sucking vitamin C pills, bathing in hot lemon juice, wearing a clove of garlic, chewing purple cone flowers, and having acupuncture while drinking a bottle of 12 year old scotch.

And yet with all these wonderful new medicines and faithful old remedies, has there ever been a recorded case of a cold which did not last precisely two weeks? 

Hmm.

However, the worst part about being sick, is not, in actual fact, being sick. Really. It’s the coincidences. 

For example, having a super sensitive nose and a tendency to sneeze will coincide exactly with the time of year that your dogs are shedding enough hair to knit a litter of puppies. Or when your spouse decides to take up smoking cigars.

Or, the day you decide to Really Let Go, that is, throw on the bunny slippers and Charlie Brown pajamas, skip combing your hair and flop on the chesterfield will be the day that your best friend from high school that you haven’t seen in 10 years will decide to surprise you with a visit.

This will also be the point in your cold in which you have run out of Ultra Soft Kleenex, and decide to resort to Vic’s Vapo Rub and Buckley’s cough syrup*. This so when you answer the door you will have a nose red enough to guide Santa’s sleigh, have a mouth that tastes like pine sap and you smell like a dead eucalyptus tree. No doubt, your friend from high school will be one of those people Who Never Gets Sick.

Another coincidence: when you have a big presentation or meeting coming up that you absolutely can’t miss, and you feel slightly ill, a co-worker or friend will always know three or four stock Cold and Flu Horror Stories. That is, while you are hoping it’s just a minor case of the sniffles, your buddy will always know a friend of a friend who just came down with Istanbul Catatonic Super Strain Green Spot Flu, which seems to involve three weeks of sinus implosions and barfing up socks. 

Perhaps the worst coincidence of all though, is this one: the time you decide that you absolutely positively can’t make it into work will also be Sweeps Week on daytime TV. Channel after channel will have specials entitled “What happened when my alien Mom started dating my girlfriend and told me I was Elvis’ love child.”

Now that’s sickening.

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