St. Zinc

We thank everyone for the get well wishes. So far Sister Mary Fiacre and I have avoided the miserable cold and Sister St. Aloysius is on the upswing. I would like to think that our Blessed Mother has smiled upon us, but I think the real miracle is in that fizzy stuff, "Airborn." There must be zinc in it. That, or someone has substituted Lourdes water in the Arrowhead jug.

Years ago I discovered, all on my own, that taking zinc kept away cold viruses as efficiently as the blood on the door jambs of the Chosen People kept away the plague of the first born in Moses' time.

No one believed me. I had to listen to people yammer about echinacea and golden root and vitamin C. I kept telling everyone that if you took zinc at the first sign of a cold, you wouldn't get the cold. And if you somehow managed to get the cold, it would be a quick easy cold.

No one paid attention.




No one pays attention when I tell them that if they use only cotton hankies to blow their noses after their echinacea and golden root and vitamin C fails them....as it always does...their noses will never get sore from blowing, even after the 439th time they've blown. That's because no matter how much lotion you put in a Kleenex, you are still blowing your nose in chunks of wood. Of course it's going to get sore.

"But Sister, having those used hankies around! The germs! Everyone will get the cold!"

Take zinc.

Now it turns out13 years later, it has been scientifically proven that zinc surrounds a virus and starves it to death. Guess what has been scientifically proven to do nothing?

You believe what I have to tell you about missing Mass on Sunday, eating meat on Friday, and wearing a hat in church. Why would I give you a bum steer on zinc?

I doesn't hurt to light a candle to St. Blaise, either. I think of St. Blaise as the patron saint of colds and flu because he is the patron saint of throat problems. We have to extrapolate because we don't have an officially named patron saint of colds and flu, although we have many saints for plagues. Not specifically named plagues. Any plague will do. Any saint who survived a plague, like St. Roch, gets "plague" tacked on to his or her patronage, I've noticed.

After that you have to go through symptom by symptom. St. Bernadette for aches and pains, St. Stephen, the first martyr (he was stoned to death) for headaches, etc.

Just don't forget about St. Zinc and St. Cotton Hankie.