Don't tinker with me, colds and flu. I am armed!

I have taken this exercise thing to new heights, for me, at least.  That explains why I was in Walmart buying lifting gloves. Those are what weight lifters wear to keep from tearing up their hands on barbells. "Wimps" my daughter said. I should note she has been a rower, and a pretty good one, at that. "They should just pound their hands to numb them. And if the cuts are too deep, just put in a little SuperGlue." Rowers are seldom hand models.

Listen, Sugarplum, I thought , if you knew how much I can bench press, you'd be calling me Mom Ma'am.

"Well, I sometimes have to shake as lot of hands, " I said, "and I don't want them to feel like I'm a stable hand in my free time."

"You still shake hands?" she asked in amazement? "That is so germy.  Everyone I know just hugs."

And blowing your germy breath into someone's neck is more sanitary? I wondered  .

And that brings me to my question. Just what do you know about Goji berry juice? Or Acai berry, for that matter. And does Airborne really work?I have been thinking a lot about contagion lately, ever since the the We Now Have Flu Vaccine sign went up at the Kroger doc-in-a-box.

I  usually deal with cold and flu season by not going out much.  Now that my children are grown and I don't do school related things, and I no longer work with little kids, I can have pleasant solitude for a good part of the winter, which is fine with me.  This fall, however, my calendar is buzzing with unaccustomed activity, the germiest probably being airplane flights and the gym.

Call me flirting with danger, but I have never had a flu shot.  Ever since my mother-in-law nearly died from her flue shot (either the shot, or she got the flu at the doctor's office, also entirely possible) I have avoided the "Elderly should be vaccinated" warnings and the AARP scare literature and have been vaccineless and flueless. But now, I think I may have pressed my luck far enough.

I toyed with wearing a mask on the plane. Not some merry Halloween interpretation of Lady GaGa, but one of those staid white medical masks like the Chinese wear in their polluted cities or that Japanese seem to wear just because they know something we don't. That could be a good way to avoid chatting with my seatmate, so it has some appeal.

Of course there will be an excessive amount of hugging and insincere air kissing at my reunion.  If I had known fifty years ago that I would be expected to hug and kiss some of these people, well, let's just say, I would have used them even more cruelly as characters in my books than I already have.  But it's never too late.

Anyway, on to the remedies. I posed the question of Goji berry juice to Kay and MaryBeth when we had lunch last week.

"I wouldn't know a Goji berry if it came up and bit me on the leg," Kay said, although perhaps a bit more colorfully.

"Well, an acquaintance of a friend had cancer, and he went into full remission after drinking huge amounts of Goji berry juice for several months," I said.

"So you decided to drink it, too?" Kay was unimpressed. Kay had cancer, too, and she got rid of it after chemo and a diet of eggs fried in bacon fat.

"Well, yes, sort of, " I said. "But only 3 ounces a day. It doesn't taste bad."

"Boy, are you a sucker." Kay dug into her unusually healthful lunch of sliced steak on a green salad.

"She is," MaryBeth unhelpfully added. "I can attest that she has an entire kitchen drawer full of Green Coffee Bean capsules, which Dr. Oz was peddling."

"Listen, this is not about me. What about Acai berries? Zinc? Super C? "

So, here it is:  I am going to drink my Goji berry juice (a powerful antioxident, everyone agrees on that ) get a shot, take my extra C and maybe take zinc (two people I know swear by it) plus eat all the vitamin loaded good stuff I already swear by, and hope for the best.  And I better not get sick.

But, my daughter put a positive spin on it. "Look at it this way.  You'll just lose those stubborn last 40 pounds a little faster."  Ah, the  annoying cheer of youth.