THE MAN COLD

It is November, the beginning of the season of illness.  So far the flu has circulated the office and now the cold is slowly making its way through too.  I have been praying to the health and wellness gods to dodge that bullet, what with the intensely busy weekend I have coming up, I genuinely can not afford to be ill.  Sadly, Tuesday morning I awoke with a tickle in my throat and mildly stuffy sinuses.  This, I have been assured, is only the beginning.  Each morning has gotten progressively worse until tonight, when I feel like I could stick my toothbrush down my throat and scratch, it's so itchy.  Oh won't I be a site to see on Saturday at the Christmas party in my new black cocktail dress and heals with runny eyes, and a nose to match.  At least I can hope for sexy scratchy voice between fits of coughing.

My only hope is that it really isn't all that bad.  You see so far the only people I know who have survived the cold are men.   For many years now my friends and I have noted how the Man Cold is much more severe then the cold that anyone else gets.  Even as the very same virus circulates through the house, somehow when the men get it, it takes on new strength.  It becomes akin to the black plague in combination with small pox.  No one in the history of the world has ever suffered as deeply as the man under the influence of the Man Cold.  Now I'm an equal opportunist, and I can assure you that this phenomenon is not limited to the cold.  It stretches from the man flu, to the man fever, to the man headache.  It even reaches as far into the psyche as the man paper cut.  No one will ever know the agony that each of these inflictions can affect on a man.

Well that's not entirely true is it though?  I mean there is a silent victim here, and that is the women who live with the infirm or wounded.  Suddenly, these once invincible Herculean men (in their own minds) become weak and snively and act as though they've reverted into 5 year old children crying for their blankey.  Everything hurts, they can't sleep, no one understands them.  It's truly a remarkable display of pathos.

So now I sit on my couch, drinking hot water with lemon and honey to ease the scratchiness in my throat, reflecting on the very people who are forewarning me of the upcoming agony I am assured I'll experience.  The very people, who had they stayed at home and not infected everyone, and who surely claim this is the bubonic plague reincarnate.  Perhaps it won't be so bad after all...

Cheers!