Now that we're well into the flu season, I'd like to give you some important health tips, address a few common misunderstandings about the flu, and ask you to keep far away from me this winter if you feel the least bit sick, ornery, or in need of a loan.

First, and perhaps most essential, is to remember to cover your mouth if you need to sneeze while reading this column. Tiny droplets of saliva and mucous are an unsightly presence on newsprint, especially when they land on the high-quality image of my head that graces you with its smiling presence each week. If you do sneeze on me, please gently wipe me off with a warm, damp cloth. And do not be afraid to apologize out loud to your newspaper.

Wash your hands if you cough, sneeze, or can't resist the urge to pick up that lone M&M off the carpet and toss it into your mouth when you think nobody's looking (Don't lie - I know you've done it before.). Wash your hands after using the bathroom, before and after meals, before handling food, and after touching any public handrails or doorknobs. Also wash your hands after feeling any gusts of wind, looking too far to your left, making an embarrassing grammatical error, hearing the telephone ring, or having any impure thoughts.

A thorough hand-washing should take you between 30 to 40 minutes, or enough time to sing the alphabet about seven dozen times.

At the risk of seeming impolite, consider foregoing handshakes altogether. Instead, greet your friends and make new acquaintances by giving them an air-high-five. This is a high-five in which no physical contact is made, but plenty of good feeling is exchanged. Do not get too swept up by the hype about the swine flu. Its symptoms are similar to the seasonal flu in all aspects except that the swine flu causes a strong craving for pork products. You cannot get the swine flu by kissing a pig, but you can get it by staring at the sun for too long. Kissing a pig will instead increase your chances of getting kidney stones and decrease your popularity by about 40 coolness points. This does not seem like a worthwhile risk to me, unless you have so many coolness points that you don't know what to do with them.

Trust me; you don't have that many coolness points.

Since the swine flu may spread quickly among children at school, some schools may close for several days until the crisis passes, thereby saving lots of money on low-grade pork products. School administrators should also make an effort to close schools on days with a lot of snow, ice, clouds, sunshine, ice cream trucks, or whenever there are good movies on network television.

Don't worry if this seems like too much information to remember. This flu season, the most important thing to do is whatever it takes to avoid getting me sick. Also, remember that most of the advice I gave you I'm pretty sure I just made up. For some slightly better information about the flu, ask someone who graduated from medical school and does not pick up dirty candy off the carpet.

BILL ZUCK is always trying to score more coolness points. You can reach him at wcz78@yahoo.com.