Since the season is upon us, here are some helpful fun facts that you may be interested in learning about the common cold:

  1. I have it.
  2. It is fucking irritating.
  3. It is also not the end of the world.
  4. Some people have real problems, Shauna.
  5. Can babies die of the common cold? I was hanging out with a baby the other day, and now I’m worried that I’ve killed him. I thought about Googling, “Can babies die of the common cold?” but I feel like that’s on a level with Googling, “I have [a symptom]: is it cancer?” in terms of how much better it will make me feel. I guess this isn’t really a fact.
  6. Dating is weird and bad when your neck is the same size as your face.
  7. Vodka mixed with holistic throat-soothing tea won’t kill the cold (I checked).
  8. If you Google, “How to cure a cold,” the internet will tell you to blow your nose (I am not kidding).
  9. If you have a cold and you are (in theory) a grown-up, you don’t get to retreat from your life and watch Boy Meets World for seven hours in a row like you did in elementary school. (Probably because you already did that on a day when you weren’t sick, and now there’s shit you can’t put off any longer but you feel so gross and so you writhe in agony and self-loathing which will only make you more sick and LIFE IS UNFAIR, WHY, OH, WHY, GOD, WHYYYYY.)
  10. You will have to remind yourself repeatedly that some people have real problems.
  11. Toast is pretty good, so there’s that.
  12. Lipton Chicken Noodle soup is wayyyyy saltier than you remember from childhood, especially if you don’t own a measuring cup.
  13. The other day I ran a bath and I put Sleepytime tea bags in it. Sleepytime tea! In the bath! It was like two of the very best things ever, except it was one big thing, and I was sitting in it. I guess this is really just a fact about my cold, but it could (and should) be a fact about yours.
  14. Hot yoga + cold = no + snot.
  15. Having a cold is an underrated opportunity for some quality recreational drug use. Take the maximum recommended dose of Tylenol PM, put on some mood lighting and the “Atmospheric Indie” playlist on Songza, and see what happens. (What happens is you will fall asleep.)
  16. You get to have a lot of fizzy drinks and citrus, so it’s almost like it’s summertime and you are on a patio in a pretty dress drinking mimosas with a cute boy who likes you. Except not really.
  17. According to the internet, hot water and steam are good for colds. A good way to gain exposure to these is to take four showers in one day. Standing on top of a steam grate downtown on the way home from work is also effective, but less enjoyable.
  18. Your yoga instructor will tell you to try drinking garlic tea. Do not listen to him.
  19. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE YOU TO SLACK OFF ON MOISTURIZING THE IN BETWEEN-Y NOSTRIL BIT OF YOUR NOSE.
  20. The common cold is your body literally telling you to maybe take it down a notch (science, guys), so have a listen, and don’t be an asshole about it. Take a nap. Watch a movie. Some people have real problems.