Never Ending Colds

 

"Mom, we need more Kleenexes!"  Victoria was distressed by the lack of soft pieces of paper on which she could blow her sensitive nose.

"Back in the old days," I put in, helpfully.  "People used to carry pieces of cloth with them that they blew their noses on.  The called these items handkerchiefs and they were very environmentally friendly, if extremely disgusting."

Victoria chose to ignore my comment.  "We are out of Kleenexes!"  She stated again.

"Back when I was boy," I said.  "My mother never bought Kleenexes (or even generic brand facial tissues).  We either had to use paper towels or toilet paper.  The way you all go through Kleenexes, there are forests in Canada that tremble every time the Waldrons get a cold."

Elaine came to my daughter's rescue.  She is a very sympathetic woman.  "I'll put it on my list, Victoria," she said.  "I'm going to the store tomorrow and I'll make sure I get some."

This has been a bad winter for runny noses and coughs in our household.  None of it has been COVID (we've checked multiple times), but someone in our family has had a cough or nasal congestion since Thanksgiving.

I suppose the problem is that we have five children, and they never catch something all at once.  Like the Ghosts of Christmas that afflicted Ebenezer Scrooge, they get sick at various times and manners and so each virus takes four or five weeks to meander its way through our family.

Like Scrooge, I could say, "Couldn't I take 'em all at once and be done with them?"  It does seem like it would be nice to have one week at the beginning of school where everyone was sick all at once and then the rest of the school year would be easy breezy.  It doesn't happen that way though.

The problem is that bad things -- behaviors and infections -- are so much more contagious than good things.  "Don't make friends with an angry man, and don't be a companion of a hot-tempered man, or you will learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare." (Proverbs 22;24,25)

There are many things that we can catch from those around us.  Poor ways of dealing with other people, anger, and even carelessness are all quite contagious.  There are many days that a spirit of grumpiness and irritability descends on our house and afflicts its inhabitants.

You don't "catch" health from someone else.  If you have a cold and hang around someone else who doesn't have that cold, what will happen is not that you catch their healthiness, but rather, they will catch your cold.

I suppose that attitudes are a bit different from viruses -- there are times that someone who is intensely positive can raise the temperature of a group considerably, but more often than not, it is the pessimist who succeeds in dragging everyone down to their level, rather than the alternative.  Contagion seems directly related to both the intensity and the negativity of the spirit involved.

When we realize that such a spirit is afflicting the people around us, we need to make an effort to combat it.  As hard as it is to be an encourager when surrounded by grumps, this is the only solution.

For those who are willing to throw themselves into lifting up the spirits of those around them will have good results -- better, in fact, than 20 boxes of Kleenexes would have on a household of Waldrons afflicted with runny noses.