The Cold That Roared!

My last few colds were not too bad, and only lasted a few days. This one, however, is different. It is now in its seventh day, with no signs of ending anytime soon. It has now been nine days since I last ran, covering nine miles with seemingly little effort on that cool morning. The Zicam, usually so effective, did not do the trick this time.

A few days ago, my cold entered a new stage, punctuated by a runny nose and by sneezing. You may have noticed the short upward climb in the stock market the other day. Yep, that was caused by me. I single-handedly caused the stocks of the manufacturers of tissues to soar. Unfortunately, investors decided at some point that an economy based to the astronomical sale of boxes of tissues was not sustainable, and the market on the whole went down. Tragic, surely, but there is only so much I can do on my own.

By the time all this happened, my nose was so sore, it looked and felt like I had had some kind of strange accident with sandpaper, or more likely, a sanding disk on a rotary drill. Every day, I got up thinking that the runny nose stage had to be over, and every day, I’ve been proved wrong as I ripped open another box of tissues.

Then there is the sneezing. Some people sneeze so quietly, you can barely detect it, like a tiny, much suppressed “ah-choo.” Not me. When I sneeze, there is no mistaking it. Well, actually there is. The other day, one of my sneezes fooled the geologists. Their seismic devices registered an earthquake of force 6.2 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter in Southeast Virginia. CNN was going nuts for a while. They never did figure out that I was (inadvertently) responsible, thank goodness, but they finally did realize there was no earthquake.

I’ve been down at the beach. The other day, I sneezed so forcefully that it upended beach umbrellas all over the place. They went cart-wheeling down the beach in large numbers. It was actually a pretty comical sight, with all the dozens of people chasing their errant umbrellas. One poor guy was nearly skewered by the point of the umbrella as is tumbled towards him. Fortunately, he dove into a large sand castle just in the nick of time. Of course, all the kids who had spent hours building the castle got really upset, and many of them started crying and screaming. Then their moms got into it with the guy as I quietly slunk away. A pacific day at the beach was turned discordant and ugly, all because of my sneezing.

A little while later, I was responsible for a near-disaster at sea. A large sailboat was cruising along a few miles out when an uncontrollable sneeze erupted from my lungs. The effects of the blast were startling, with the wind not only creating huge whitecaps, but its force causing a knock-down. For you non-sailors, this is when a gust of wind is so strong that it knocks a sailboat over on its side, a position from which it often cannot recover. Fortunately, our wonderful Coast Guard lived up to their motto of “Semper Paratus” and arrived in minutes, saving not only everyone of board but managing to right the boat as well. A maritime disaster was averted by these brave men and women, no thanks to me.

You may ask why I didn’t just remain inside. Well, I tried that, but after a sneeze blew out all the windows not just of my place but the one next door, it just seemed less damaging to be outdoors as much as possible where the effects of the blast could dissipate to a large extent. As you can see from my tales of near tragedy, this has had mixed success.

I hope to be over this cold, and its damaging effects, soon and back to running. But that is not going to happen today.