Death, Taxes, and the Common Cold

Bob Greene : My family's refusal to acknowledge having come down with a cold amounted to an epidemic in its own right.

Greene: To so strenuously withhold acknowledgment of a cold was to imply that the cold itself was something to be avoided at all costs.

He says the attribution of cold symptoms to something other than a cold is not so different from the attempt to avoid getting sick by wearing a piece of cloth: Both are futile efforts to stamp out the reality of sickness.