By MARK GILCHRIST

Did you have a nice holiday season? Good, now take a few steps back please. Don’t breathe on me, and please, don’t shake my hand. I like you, I do, and I’d like to talk with you, but this is for our own good.

Your breath could be deadly. If you are human – or any other mammal for that matter – then the air around you, because of you, has more germs than the top of a Jersey smokestack.

The palm of your hand is like a Petri dish of viral cultures. This time of year, you are a time bomb ready to blow.

I know all this because I’ve just been through a nasty case of the flu, and I have been all of those things to my fellow Columbus Countians. For this I am sorry, sure, but only a fool – a foolhardy fool – would allow sympathy like that to let his guard down.

Each year 20,000 Americans die from the flu or its complications, and frankly, I’d rather be one of the 30 Americans who die each year after jumping out of airplanes. Death by skydiving is quick and painless compared to the weeks of agony that is the flu.

It all started on a Thursday afternoon with a scratchy throat. I left the office early on Friday, took some of that medicine mixed with scalding hot water, and crawled under the covers, nursing a worn body and singed tongue.

I returned to this world sometime that evening, briefly, then slept through most of Saturday morning.

When you’re in the heat of the flu, you are acutely aware of germs everywhere – you can almost see them swarming around that doorknob or desktop. The inside of a public restroom will frighten you. You are thankful that you can’t smell a thing.

I avoid touching anything with all the paranoia of a former Russian spy, and I will not use my palms or fingertips. I open doors with the back of my hand, or my elbow. I work the ATM with my knuckles, and yes, I have flushed at least one toilet with my foot.

I do this also out of sheer politeness and concern about spreading my germs to my coworkers and friends. Isn’t that nice?

Colds and the flu are heck on the nose because of what comes out of it, but torture on the mouth for what goes in. The combination of harsh medicines and hot soups confuses what taste buds are still working, and since your nose is plugged solid, you breathe through your mouth and you dry it out until it feels like a lumberjack’s wool sock.

The hours you spend awake at night pondering the value of the life you have left and while you burden your throat with a roomful of dry, scratchy air, you feel the lining of your throat disappear like shower scum under a Brillo pad. If you doze, breathing through your mouth, you will snore louder than usual, waking everyone in the room. You will wake the person you love, the person who, due to geographic inconvenience, is next in line for the flu.

Granted, all that stuff that’s made in your olfactory factory that plugs your nose during cold and flu season can make for a fascinating study in science, but don’t explore it, please – your coworkers will send you home.

To salvage what throat I have left, my lozenge of choice is Fisherman’s Friend. It’s a coarse, brown sucker that looks like a river stone, tastes like straight menthol, and has the kick of a mule. It’s so harsh that nobody will go near you, solving both problems of giving and receiving germs. When these run out, I resort to the popular candy-like lozenges, which I have learned to deftly unwrap two at a time.

Speaking of spreading germs, I wash my hands much more often than usual, and if I don’t have a cloth to sneeze into, I bury my nose in my elbow. I was raised to believe that these sudden outbursts should be done in relative secret, much as if they were coming out the other end.

But some people around here appear to be so proud of their expectorate that they pronounce them in loud explosions, spewing bodily fluids everywhere. It’s bewildering. What on earth are they doing, marking their territory?
The first few days of my flu, my co-workers were polite, wishing me well, and showing concern for my wellbeing. That was nice.

By the end of the first week, they politely asked if I’d been to a doctor, and by the second week their attitudes grew darker.

During the flu season, we are all drifting in a lifeboat, and though it is true that we all love each other around here, and though it is true that all human life is precious, you know that at some point, someone’s getting tossed overboard.

Given the age and frailty of some of the folks around here, the flu can be a life-or-death situation, so I tried to stay out of the office as much as I could.

There are two things I actually enjoy about having the flu. First, is the intense sensation of peacefulness that comes with not being able to do a darned thing. Provided your life lets you take a break, climb under the covers, curl up like the little baby that you are and fall into a trance where you inventory every joint in your body and then you fall asleep.

The second thing I love about having the flu is the amazing baritone voice that my shredded vocal cords yield. It is so smooth and deep and rich that, even though I feel like warmed over road kill – and I look even worse – all I have to do is say a few words and women swoon.

Researchers who research this stuff have found that there is something about a deep, deep voice that women find attractive. Nothing yet on the appeal of bleary eyes, sneezing fits or projectile vomiting.

Speaking of speaking on the porcelain telephone, I managed to escape that conversation this time around, possibly because I didn’t put anything down to throw back up, and in one week I must have lost 10 pounds. So there I was, looking trim, and sporting a lounge singer’s voice – I could have taken on the world, except I barely felt like walking.

Colds and the flu are humbling vacations from reality. They can be avoided and should be whenever possible. But when you find yourself brought down by these maladies, it’s time to hunker down and suffer in private. Stay away from people you love, for their own good, and when it’s over, it’s time to celebrate. It’s time to go skydiving.