Tips and tricks to beat Severe Man Cold Syndrome

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/02/2019 (2714 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Everyone I know is sick.

I am not exaggerating, because, as far as I can tell, everyone I work with, hang out with or stare at from my living-room window is in the grips of the Killer Death Cold/Flu from Mars/Hell.

Take my wife, for example. For the record, I don’t mean you should literally come to my house, pack my wife in a large suitcase and take her somewhere, although if you did, I probably would get more sleep because there would be far less sneezing and coughing and wheezing in our bedroom.

My spouse, She Who Must Not Be Named, is now in Week 9 of this terrible contagion, which, for at least five weeks, wreaked havoc on her vocal cords, causing her to lose her voice, which meant that I had complete control over what we watched on TV because she was unable to complain at a volume audible to the male ear.

Along with my wife, all of my friends have been stricken as well. My buddy Bob, for instance, came down with this cold, and treated it the way he treats every illness: by denying he was sick and going outside to run in the cold, because he is a hardy pioneering kind of male who enjoys spreading germs.

His wife has also been knocked flat by this evil virus, as have a bunch of other friends and colleagues. For some reason — possibly witchcraft — I have so far been spared this devastating illness, which is odd because I am typically Victim No. 1 for whatever happens to be going around.

As a public-health initiative, here is my tried-and-true regimen for coping with Severe Man Cold Syndrome:

● Find a couch and curl up in the fetal position so that you look like a giant boiled shrimp;

● Attempt to turn on your big-screen TV using only your Jedi mind-control powers because your doctor says you should watch 24 straight hours of (a) sports highlights or (b) the Weather Network;

● Yell — “Cough, cough, splutter, SWEETHEART!!!” — for your spouse to come into the den and turn on the TV for you, and just maybe bring you a bowl of hot soup, a box of tissues and a family-size bottle of ginger ale;

● When your wife arrives, ask her to feel your forehead, dab at you with a moist cloth and then alert your children so they can begin arguing over who gets your golf clubs if you don’t survive;

● As your wife is storming out of the den, inform her that when you were a kid, your sainted mother would always rub Vicks VapoRub on your chest while gently muttering “There, there” and “Poor little bunny.”

Since so many of you are under the weather, so to speak, I decided to brave the cold yesterday and seek the medical opinions of a group of local experts, by which I mean the kids in Cindy Shields’ grades 4-5 class at Elwick Community School in Seven Oaks School Division.

Librarian Gale Morton invited me to visit the kids as part of I Love to Read Month and, in between reading books, telling lame jokes and doing animal impersonations, I got the kids to sit down and scribble out their prescriptions for dealing with a killer cold/flu.

Here is what these pint-sized physicians recommend for anyone coughing and sniffling themselves into oblivion:

Prescription No. 1: “How to heal cramping stomach pain: get your cat on your stomach and make it purr.” — Peter, 10, Grade 4

Prescription No. 2: “Stay home and eat chips. Stay home and drink pop. Stay home and play games on Xbox. Stay home and watch TV.” — Joe, 9, Grade 4

Prescription No. 3: “What I would do, I would just rest, watch TV and sleep a lot. And eat. And get a small towel, put hot water on it and put it in my head. Or I would ask my dad to get McDonald’s or Burger King. And skip school.” — James, 9, Grade 4

Prescription No. 4: “I sleep. I stay at my home. I eat soup at my home. I play PlayStation 4.” — Caleb, 9, Grade 4

Prescription No. 5: “Sleep and soup and eat tacos.” — Taya, 10, Grade 5

Prescription No. 6: “When someone gets sick, I would tell then to get medicine. Joke: Why does a pig do karate? Answer: Pork chop!” — Justine, 9, Grade 4

Prescription No. 7: “If you’re sick then eat food and sleep. You can eat any food you want! (Then in tiny letters) Should be healthy food like soup.” — Ayeisha, 11, Grade 5

Prescription No. 8: “Stay home and play Fortnite and orange juice.” — Jayden, 9, Grade 4

The rest of the young MDs pretty much just drew squiggly pictures of superheroes and robots and monsters and flowers and giant pickles and people drinking coffee and eating cake, which I assume is another scientific way to ward off cold symptoms.

Also reading to the Elwick School kids Tuesday morning was my buddy Big Daddy Tazz, one of Canada’s finest standup comedians and a man who defeats cold germs by making them laugh themselves to death.

I asked Tazz for his remedy for the bug that is picking on so many people this winter, and he said, “Just move to Vancouver. Or go outside, because the cold weather will either kill the cold, or kill you.”

Look, I have a lot more to say on this topic, but I can tell by the bleary-eyed way you are reading today’s column that you are in the early stages of this vicious virus.

Fortunately, you know exactly what to do: lie in bed, drink plenty of fluids, watch mindless stuff on TV and, if you see my wife, tell her that my soup is starting to get cold. Apparently a few tacos couldn’t hurt, either.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca