The Writer and the Common Cold: Productivity Zero

No doubt the common cold has been a curse to the human race--especially writers---for centuries. Humans have figured out how to go to the moon, how to take pictures of Mars, how to transmit TV to the far reaches of the globe and how to send photographs from one telephone to another.

The common cold: That's another story. Writers with colds,  intent on churning out novels or poetry or screenplays, tend to come to a screeching halt. That includes the ones who make millions of dollars in book sales all the way down to the ones who are learning to put two literate paragraphs together.

Looking for a cure? Feel free to move along and to Google "common cold". This bit of prose is a helpless protest against what the common cold does to writers.

• If you have a cold, you can still pick up a knife and fork and feed yourself. You can still make a telephone call. What you can't do is tap into creativity and your expansive vocabulary. Your head is clogged. Your ability to think puts you several notches down the evolutionary ladder.
• Your nose is a conduit, a Niagara Falls (or choose any waterfall you wish) of annoying "stuff". Tissues (and I've sometimes used bath towels to save paper) are your futile attempt to give yourself comfort. But friends who see you walk into a room, clutching a box of tissues (especially a LARGE box) tend to exclude you from the conversation group.
• After days of dealing with the Niagara Falls in the middle of your face, your nose turns red, reminding you of W.C. Fields, Bozo the Clown, or a booze-saturated creature who starts drinking at breakfast.
• The next step, after The Eternal Nose Stream, is The Cough. You toss lozenges into your mouth as though they were after-dinner mints. You hack, to the point that geese flying south for the winter stop by to ask you to join the convoy.
• You try all the home remedies recommended by your mother, your closest friends and in fact, anybody you encounter who doesn't have a cold. Chicken soup. Salt water gargle. Vicks Vapo-Rub (a traditional all-purpose remedy in my family). Honey and lemon juice.
• You become totally useless in any relationships, no matter how superficial or how bonded you are. All you can think of is getting rid of this curse on your life.
• When people ask you, "How's the book coming along?" you look at them in disbelief, blow your nose, and walk away grumbling and hacking.
• The old proverb about curing a cold hasn't changed much: With medication you can cure a cold in 14 days. Without medication, you can cure a cold in two weeks. However long your version of the plague lasts, it's that many days with little or no productivity as a writer.
• What's the moral of all this? Suffering through the common cold reminds us that we are humans, subject to those nasty germs (no matter how often we wash our hands). About the time that we think that we are writers who are the best thing since sliced bread (or chocolate candy), we "come down" (interesting phrase, isn't it?) with a cold and we don't feel so invulnerable any more.
• As I write this, I am inseparable from several boxes of tissues. I canceled several appointments for networking this week, only keeping the appointments for interviews that lead to cash payment for stories. I know that this will pass, but it never passes soon enough.
• I now empower anyone who reads this to send along your own favorite remedy for Banishing the Common Cold. It can't hurt.