Caution: Column is contagious?

Maybe this column should be sprayed with Lysol before reading any further.
I don’t want to pass along a bug that’s been bothering me for the past few days.
Then again, in this season, the bugs seem to outnumber the people some days.
It’s impossible to go anywhere without encountering coughs or sneezes or worse. That’s a given in the Midwest in January.
My wife dealt with this particular bug before I did, so I had some idea what I was getting into. Or, more precisely, what was getting into me.
It started with a headache, which I blamed on the alarm going off so early. Last Wednesday morning, Connie had to head down to McCormick’s Creek State Park for some environmental training. That meant hitting the road early, which translated into an hour less sleep, and which — I believed — gave me a headache.
But the headache didn’t go away. It hung around for the better part of the day, keeping me company, I guess, since my wife was out of town.
My approach was to take a couple of aspirin and go to bed early. And that seemed to help.
At least it gave me a burst of energy on Thursday. But by Thursday afternoon while I was taking Ted Johnson, our new part-time reporter at The News and Sun, around to meet some folks, a cough that hadn’t been much before started sounding worse.
I recognized the cough. Connie had sounded the same a week earlier, and there’d been similar coughs around the office since Christmas. But now it was mine.
Faced with a Redkey Town Council meeting that night, I cut the afternoon short and went home for a good long nap.
Once again, that helped. Bundling up and wrapping a scarf around my neck, I was in good shape for the council meeting and made it through without a single cough. (Since I also avoided shaking hands, I’m off the hook for any Redkey outbreak of this particular bug.)
Friday I bounced back again, until mid-afternoon. By then, sneezing had joined the symphony of disgusting sounds. Bleary-eyed, I was responsible for a dreadful bit of proofreading, missing three errors in two consecutive sentences. All three mistakes were words, just not the right words.
So the weekend was devoted to recuperation or, more accurately, letting the bug run its course. That meant feeling fine most of the time and rotten every once in awhile. It also meant more coughing, more sneezing, and more bleary eyes.
By the time you read this, I should be back to what passes for normal for a 64-year-old guy in winter. In other words, I’ll be a prime target for whatever new bug happens to come my way.[[In-content Ad]]