Cold Season

It's coming. I haven't got one but cold remedies are all over the news these days and last week I felt a minor dryness in my throat that went away quickly with lots of water and as much sleep as the Stinkerbug (aka Princess Pruneface) would allow. But on another site I visit, the author is suffering from a cold right now and it reminded me of a story from a long, long time ago...

I once had a bad cold during exam season in high school. The kind of cold where your nose is so badly congested that it feels like the snot has turned into one big solid plug. Blowing and sniffing were both ineffective as the log jam prevented any clearing of the nasal passages. I wrote an exam and halfway through my nose started dripping onto the paper. My horror turned into panic because in a quiet gymnasium an otherwise silent drip sounds like a Hollywood movie splat. I wonder who heard and who saw it fall. Since I couldn't sniff it back up my dammed up nose and blowing it with the scrap of tissue I had with me wasn't working either the only thing I could do, albeit in a humiliated fashion, was to shove the tissue up each nostril and let them soak up the excess drippage. But hey, when you're sick, feel like shit and have to write an exam, public image really falls by the wayside. As I recall, that exam was about 2 hours long. The tissue barely held back the flood waters.

I turned in my paper with snot splatters. I had tried to clean it up as much as I could but there was no hiding the evidence, you didn't need to be on CSI to see the evidence. A small part of me felt stupid but the rest of me only cared enough to go home and sleep the cold off. I remember hoping that no one who touched my paper would get sick because I oozed germs and boogers all over it.