Dead Again

**Whine Alert - Caution, you are entering whine country**

I have a cold again. I just had a cold a month ago, what's up with that! Actually, I know where I got this one, one of the guys at work was in California and brought back a West Coast strain that was sufficiently different to mess me up. So, I'm being a good citizen and staying home today. But I'm still whiny, congested, nose is running, incompetent, tired, dull, lost my sense of smell. Geez.

That reminds me of a science fiction story I read as a kid about how science finally figured out how to kill off the rhinovirus that humans have had for so long. Unfortunately, it created another entry in the Journal of Unexpected Results because by it's permanent presence the virus was limiting the human sense of smell. Now that the virus was out of the way, human smell perception increased 10,000 percent. People were throwing up from perfumes, they couldn't eat most foods, anyone could tell where someone else had been for the last five days, who they were with and what they had done. Think about it. People became shut-ins and hermits until science figured out a way to re-infect everyone to get people back to 'normal' and enable the preservation of the race. Very creative, I wish I could remember the name of it. I got the story from the Science Fiction Book Club.

I was a pretty young kid when I became a member of the Science Fiction Book Club. They produced hardback books for only a dollar so that's where all my allowance went for a while. That's where I was introduced to Heinlein, Clarke, et. al. and consequently prompted me to go to the new library in North Miami to get more. For all I know, that was one of the triggers for my lifelong love and appreciation of libraries. Insignificant events can have powerful repercussions.