I used to look forward to getting a bad cold. This wasn't just because I could then watch "Dumb and Dumber" in the middle of the day and not feel terribly guilty about it. It wasn't just because my sweet woman would bring me chicken noodle soup and Wheat Thins and little slices of cheddar cheese in bed. And it wasn't just because being sick allowed me to take a nice long nap in the middle of the day without ruining my nighttime sleep.

No, what I used to like about the cold was that it offered me the opportunity to take the greatest cold-fighting medication known to man -- orange-flavored Alka-Seltzer Cold and Flu remedy. Plop plop fizz fizz, baby. A shot of fizzy orange tonic, and then lie down on the couch and fall asleep to the gentle sound of Jim Carrey asking, "Hey, want to hear the most annoying sound in the entire world?"

But then they took it off the market. Seems it was giving too many people coronaries. I have been very bitter about this. I mean, so do jogging shoes, but you don't see any overweaning government agency yanking them off the market, now do you? So the Feds deprived me of my meds. Overnight, the cold became less inviting.

A few days ago, the wife and I have collapsed in front of the television to watch a show we are too tired to see, but which we watch anyway, because the prospect of going to sleep only to wake up seemingly instantaneously for another day of labor is more than either of us can bear.

"Look honey," says the wife, gesturing to a commercial running across our television screen, "they've brought back your Alka-Seltzer." She pats me on the shoulder. "Now you can get sick again."

"No," I reply with a surly voice, "it's not the same. They've reformulated it. I need the stuff that can give me a heart attack."

"You don't know -- this could be just as good."

"It's never just as good."

"How do you know that?"

"Two words for you, my friend: New. Coke."

This evokes a visible shudder. I've made my point clear.