Annual Cold?

I just reviewed my 2013 NaBloPoMo postings and learned that I had a cold this time last year.  Well, hello déjà vu, my old friend, I'm here to comfort you again.  Yep, two weeks of sudden sniffles, scratchy throat and the kind of stuff that drives you to Nyquil-ville.

Not bad, though, one mild cold in a year.  Could be a lot worse.  I survived the Flu Attack of 1991 and still remember that episode:  hunkered under the covers, talking to the doctor on the phone such that he said, "Uh, don't come in, OK, I'll just drop some antibiotics by parachute and you'll be fine ... or not."  Sage advice.

Speaking of sage advice I once got some advice from a doctor that I clearly misunderstood, that caused great hilarity in a certain pharmacy and I'm sure they still tell the story.

During an annual physical I mentioned that my wife was in the throes of a flu attack and sneezing, coughing, stuffed up, aches and pains and all the stuff associate with a flu attack, or flu-like.  I asked if there was anything I could do to help relieve her suffering.

He told me, "Tincture of time" but what I heard was "Tincture of thyme."  I was not aware of the idiom at the time but I proved myself an idiot of the time a few minutes later at the pharmacy.

After perusing the shelves and discovering Tincture of Clove, and Tincture of Garlic and Tincture of Mint, I was unable to find Tincture of Thyme, so I went up to the pharmacist and asked him, "I'm looking for Tincture of Thyme, do you have any?"

The pharmacist looked at me for a long time and finally said, "We're fresh out.  Come back in a week."

There was something about the look on his face, the twinkle in his eye, the smirk on his lips, the suppressed guffaw in his throat that indicated to me that I had been had by the Second Oldest Trick in the Book.

On the way home my poor brain figured it out and I had one of those "D'oh!" moments.  Not the first, not the last.

And the Oldest Trick in the Book, according to the popular commercial is, "Lookest over there.  Ha, I madest thou look."

Yeah, there is an oldest trick in the book.