The thing about catching a summer cold is it’s just unnatural.

It’s kinda like fried ice cream. Fried ice cream is unnatural. Who thought of fried ice cream? Weird.

Summer colds don’t just come and go and get it over with. Mine is still lingering as an occasional but sudden eruptive cough.

I can be tooling along nice and happy, minding my own business, having lunch with the gang, whatever, and all of a sudden this tickle in my throat gets me. I’m not talking gradually now, I mean it’s like somebody shot off a tickle-gun on my tonsils. Or where my tonsils used to be. A violent coughing fit ensues, and I just can’t seem to cough hard enough or long enough to scratch that tickle, and it’s all I can do not to go after it with a dinner fork.

It’s just unnatural. Colds are for winter, not summer or spring. Heat stroke is for summer. Sunburn is for summer. People don’t get heat stroke in winter, do they? Why don’t the rules work in the opposite direction?

Mornings are the worst. Mornings make me understand what a fire hose must go through. First the shower generates heat that starts working on the chest congestion. Then the hot coffee I drink while I’m walking Bogie kicks in. Before I know it, the coughing starts, and flocks of geese across the bayou take flight in frantic escape and I swear I saw a small herd of gazelles leap out of the sawgrass in terror down this side of the bayou.

Summer colds are unnatural because of the word "cold." "Cold" implies winter, not summer. Summer colds are also unnatural because they seem to empower other people and turn them into armchair physicians.

You sneeze two, three times and someone blesses you each time and says, "The ragweed really is bad this year," in commiseration.

"No," you say. "I have a cold."

"A cold? How do you know it’s not ragweed?"

"Because I have a cough, too."

"That could be because of the ragweed. Causes sinus drip."

"No, it’s a cold."

"Did you go to the doctor?"

"No. There’s nothing they can do about a cold, it’s a virus."

And you see them smirk and nod and say nothing more, but you know in your heart of hearts that smirk is saying, "Uh-huh. Ragweed." So you do your best to breathe on them without them noticing.

They recommend, in a spirit of kindness and humanitarian aid, all sorts of medicines, home concoctions (some of which involve turpentine and scare the bejeezus out of me) and treatments that almost invariably include Vick’s. I’m not knocking Vick’s, I think it’s wonderful stuff, but I do not think it should be taken internally, that’s just me. I can picture this little mentholated globule of Vick’s rolling around in my digestive tract. Eww.

The only medicine that really, really works is the ancient and well-regarded hot toddy. Make sure you are not driving or operating heavy equipment before taking this. We’re talking a few tablespoons of lemon juice, honey, a dash of water and a jigger or two or four (or six) of scotch, warmed in the microwave. My grandma swore by it, but she used bourbon. Either way, it makes you feel better and is a dangsight tastier than those supposed "cherry flavored" medicines. If cherry really tasted like that there’d have been a worldwide crusade to wipe out cherry trees years ago so nobody’d ever have to taste them again.

Luckily, I’ve got medications I can take without risking a DWI. No matter the scandalous news reports that over-the-counter cough and cold medicines do little to nothing for colds, I’m here to testify in any court in the land Nyquil and Dayquil are the best dang things since hot toddies, or even canned fruitcake. (Seriously, I like canned fruitcake.)

Nyquil puts me down like a strong sedative, and Dayquil gets me through the day on most colds and flus. That’s a fact for me. The writers of those negative reports can go take a long walk off a short box of Kleenex for all I care, the stuff works.

Worst bug I ever had was nearly ten years ago just after I started here. I mean, it was like jungle fever, and that’s what I still think of it as. I was sweating for half an hour, freezing for half an hour, and I’m sure I was delirious because I kept thinking I saw Bengal tigers in my living room, which was only my late gray tabby Moses begging for food because I hadn’t gotten off the sofa in three days. I also thought I saw Bob Hope and Bing Crosby pass through the room once, stop and tell a joke about Paul Revere, and then exit stage right.

Say, didn’t you stay in Boston last week?

Is it starve a cold, feed a fever or the other way around? I can never get that straight, and end up making matters worse by feeding the wrong one. It then gets a superiority complex – in this case, an "epidemic complex," for a bug – and takes me down for the count again.

Back when I smoked cigarettes, the saving grace of a bad cold was I generally didn’t smoke while I was sick, and I didn’t eat much either, so I ended up losing a couple pounds. None of this would matter, of course, because as soon as the fever broke and I felt a little better, my appetite would return and I’d eat a whole casserole dish of lasagna and a dozen cinnamon rolls, then go out and smoke a pack of cigarettes, which sent me to hacking and wheezing all over again.

Bogie goes crazy when I sneeze, especially twice or three times. I don’t know what he thinks I’m doing or why it freaks him out, but he leaps at my face, not angrily, more like with some penetrating curiosity and excitement. Perhaps he thinks I’ve finally blown a gasket, being as I’m so uptight all the time and bossing him around, and he thinks if he sticks his snout in the rupture he might be able to seal it and thus save my life. It’s good to know I have him around with a plan in case that happens, though I’m certain if a squirrel passed within a hundred feet of my sprawled body, Bogie will leave me for dead without a second thought.