A few days before Christmas, my spouse heard a knock at the front door. He opened it up and then slammed it immediately. I heard him shout, “Quick. Lock all the doors. Pull down the shades. There is an unwanted guest out there.”

I peeked out the window and didn’t see a thing. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s a cold. I feel it,” he said. “It’s knocking on the front door!”

We went into action. We swallowed down Airborne pills (a blast of Vitamin C to ward off the common cold) and drank hot herbal tea. I also made a pot of chicken soup for us. It worked at first. We could keep the common cold at bay and enjoy our company during the holidays.

Then just as we were putting away the Christmas decorations and celebrating the New Year, it happened: My spouse woke up with a sore throat. “He’s here!” he shouted.

I scrambled out of bed, popped in a few more Airborne pills, made some turkey noodle soup and pulled out the cherry throat lozenges … to no avail. The cold came on him with a vengeance.

Before you knew it, he had Vapo-rub out and boxes of tissues everywhere. In the meantime, I washed my hands raw with anti-bacterial soap and changed the air filters in the house, anything to make sure I did not catch the cold.

Before long, my medicated spouse started walking around the house reciting an old Dr. Seuss poem that I did not recognize. “Marvin K. Mooney, Will you please GO NOW. The times has come, the time is now. Just go, go, go! I don’t care how. You can go by foot, you can go by cow.”

Anyway, you get the idea. He was seriously ready to have his cold end.

So, with cough syrup in hand he headed back to bed muttering about Marvin K. Mooney, while I continued to scrub everything he had touched.

Then I found myself muttering to our uninvited guest myself. “The time has come, the time is now.”

A few mornings later, he wandered into the living room with a cup of coffee in his hand and a smile on his face.

“Now I am ready to recite the last few lines of the Marvin K. Mooney story.” he said, “The time has come. So Marvin went.”

At last, our uninvited guest was gone.