How to Catch Every Germ on the Block

Cold season passing you by? Never had the flu? Tired of taking sick days when you aren’t sick? You could be down with the 24-Hour Flu and heaving before the day is done.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Have a child in daycare, preschool or elementary school.
   
   
2. Hug and kiss your child whenever possible, especially after they come home from school or daycare.
3. Washing is for wimps! No one is looking to see if you’re washing your hands after using a public restroom; live dangerously.
4. Forget the 5-second rule, make it 50. Dropped food is wasted food unless you pick it right up and pop it in your mouth.
   
   
5. Spend time in a physician’s waiting room, preferably at a pediatric practice. Put your face up against the aquarium, play with the plastic toys, then rub your hands along the arms of your chair, pick your nose and eat finger food.
   
   
6. Get out among the people! Attend crowded rock concerts during the cold and flu season, ride public transport and hold onto the rails, climb in the maze-like tubes of a fast food restaurant play area.
7. Be sure to avoid vitamins once you feel a cold coming on, . Burn the candle at both ends and forget about drinking clear liquids so as to remain sick as long as possible, and increase the potential for a secondary infection!

Tips & Warnings

• No kids? Act like one! You, too, can lick the handles on grocery carts, put other people’s keys in your mouth and drink from a sick, snotty toddler’s sippy cup.
• Skipping bathing altogether gives germs a chance to take hold and grow on your epidermis, increasing your chances of a good week in bed with a fever.
• You may run out of ailments if you stay in the same place. Make sure to move or travel often to optimize the number of cold and influenza strains available.
• Use numerical motivation--what percentage of life do you want to spend blowing your nose, hacking up a lung and running to the toilet: 10 percent, 25 percent, 50 percent? Setting a number can help you achieve your goal.
• Constant illness can lead to secondary infections, halitosis, broken capillaries, depression and an impaired social life; getting out of work another way might be safer for your physical and emotional well-being.