The Common Cold

“Happiness is a tablet,” writes Mitch Album, author of Tuesdays With Morrie. “This is our world.   Prozac.  Daxil.  Xanax.  Billions are spent to advertise such drugs.  And billions are spent in purchasing them.  You don’t even need a specific trauma, just ‘general depression’ is enough, or anxiety, as if sadness is as treatable as the common cold.”  Sadness is not very treatable by pill or fluid and neither is the common cold as far as I’m concerned.

I wish there were such a tablet to treat and cure the common cold at the moment, but I don’t know of any.  We have both developed a cold! Consarnit! That is my diagnosis.  The worse part is that we are suffering from these colds while visiting our grandchildren.  Where’s the tablet to make colds go away?  We’ve been trying some over-the-counter remedies, eating a lot of chicken noodle soup, and drinking lots of water, but we still have colds.  We can “treat” the common cold, they say, but there is no cure for it.  Pam Ayres wrote:

Medicinal discovery

It moves in mighty leaps,

It leapt right past the common cold

And gave it us for keeps.”

Gene Tierney said, “Movie failures are like the common cold.  You can stay in bed and take aspirin for six days and recover.  Or you can walk around and ignore it for six days and recover.”  We will try to do the latter while here in Flagstaff with our grandchildren.

Ethan and Eleni on Katie's Wedding Day
October 2017