* $ Tree and "Blue" Air

Well, it finally happened. It started with that little tickle in the back of the throat and bloomed from there. My first cold in over a year. Even as a child, I dreaded the "dreaded" head cold. I don't cough well...coughing makes me gag. I don't like not being able to taste or smell my food. And I certainly don't like the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer effect my nose takes on. Besides, I just have too much to do to bother with all this foolishness.

I knew it was coming. Here's how it happened. I was trying to get a "few" items in Dollar Tree. There I was on the basket aisle, when some lady and two children came rolling by, she was coughing her head off. I made a quick retreat and tried to roll my buggy out of the way...I'll come back when the air cleared of her germs and get the containers.

Then as I went down the tissue paper aisle, I heard another one...she was tall and I thought maybe the germs would go over my head, but just to make sure, I turned around and took another direction. I'll come back for the tissue.

Coming down an aisle I didn't need to be on, I looked up and the woman with the two boys was coming my way. One of her kids (about 10 years old) said to me, "Hey, would you hand me some Extreme Sour Gummy Straws? They are in the back and I can't reach them." He was a large child and was almost tall as I was, but I reached for the box waaaay in the back and handed him the candy. I could hear Mama coughing all the while. Because of those Extreme Gummies I had to breathe the "blue" air and I believe to this day, THAT was the source of my germs. (No good deed goes unpunished.)

Went to check out and there we all were, stuffed in $ Tree's check out line, everybody in the place (but me at the time) coughing and snorting to beat the band. (Once in science class they showed us a movie about germs and how far they traveled in the air when one sneezes or coughs...that movie changed my life forever and I will never forget the horror of the moment that I became aware of what one cough or sneeze could do to innocent bystanders!)

So it was certainly no surprise when I woke up Sunday morning with a sore throat, etc. Now I know you can't stay away from everybody for the duration of a cold, but you sure don't need to shop at the height of the Christmas season in $ Tree, no less and spread the "blue air" around to all of us, besides that, I never did get my tissue paper and the baskets! Happy Monday, honk, honk!