February is upon us and with it come sniffles, dribbles and empty boxes of tissues. The cold season! The dreaded, congested, most horrible season of all. With the cold weather outside, most of us prefer to stay inside, cuddled up in warm blankets with a cup of coffee in our hands and Netflix playing on our laptop screens. There is nothing, I repeat, nothing wrong with that. However, during the times that we do have to go out and be among the healthy people, let us be mindful of how to overcome the plague and be considerate of others who don’t want to catch the common cold flying around the germ-infested air.

I sat in class the other day beside a guy who had obviously come down with a cold. He was rubbing his nose and slurping all his nastiness throughout the entire class. Fortunately, for him and for the rest of his classmates, he had not caught the cough portion of the average cold. I would have been up and out of my seat had he been hacking up a lung beside me. The constant snot gargling was more than enough.

My friend Joe, was staring at his laptop screen and wiping away as I worked on my assignment when he did the worst thing. Now, I’d like to think I’m a pretty tolerant person, but this just about shut me down for the day. As I’m tapping away on my keyboard, Joe did a full swipe and swivel with the side of his hand and then, after examining the results, extended his hand beneath him to wipe it across the side of his chair.

I wanted to look him in the eye and tell him to set the chair on fire and take some Dayquil. Gross!

Those of you who have a cold and are hiding behind your computer screen with two tissues stuck up your nostrils, please, I am begging you to take your meds, bring your tissues and wash your hands.

Don’t take it personally, but nobody wants what you’ve got. Nobody!