THE MALE POINT OF VIEW
I’m neither a hypochondriac nor a germophobe, and on the whole pretty unflappable. Give me a major health crisis—well, don’t, but you know what I mean—and I’ll handle it calmly. But at the faintest sign of a possible approaching sniffle, all bets are off. I regard the incipient cold, if that is what this slightly scratchy throat will turn into, as a personal affront. And I shift immediately into siege mentality, my mind rearranging itself into a kind of situation room.
Someone once told my wife that colds are three days coming, three days with you, and three days leaving. I’m fine with that arc, but not with the numbers: that’s a lot of days to be incommoded. Why, I always want to know, couldn’t it be three hours for each phase? So I set about trying to make it so.
