My
wife got one of those forwarded emails the other day. One those emails so
full of knowledge everybody who gets it feels the need to send it to
everybody they know so they can be enlightened too.
The subject line read- post this
inside of your medicine chest- and it was followed by a long list of
cure-alls from easing burns by rubbing Colgate toothpaste on them to curing
a urinary tract infection by drinking Alka Seltzer.
The person that sent the email to the
person who sent it to us put a little line with it that said, Don't know the
validity of these but may be worth a try some day.
Here's an idea, if you don't know the
validity of something, don't send it to somebody else.
And here's another idea. If the people
who make Colgate toothpaste don't advertise it as a burn treatment, don't
rub it on one.
My favorite read-Before you head to
the drug store for a high priced inhaler filled with mysterious chemicals,
try chewing a couple of curiously strong Altoids peppermints. They'll clear
up your stuffed up nose.
Mysterious chemicals in nose drops?
There's nothing mysterious about the .05 % solution of oxymetazoline
hydrochloride in my bottle of Afrin. It'll clear your snout out in 2 seconds
flat. All chewing Altoids will do is improve the smell of
your breath.
The real mystery is people who forward
these types of emails.
But I did get some good out this one
as it harkened me back to my childhood where my daddy was the man with all
the mysterious cure-all chemicals. He had 'em all and a few and potions and
wild ideas to go along with 'em as well.
The time I got eat up with the
planters warts somebody told him you cured those by putting a penny for each
wart in a rag and then burying them in the yard. There
might have been some incantation or voodoo spell that went along with it,
luckily I don't remember.
Either way it didn't work. The
dermatologist, however, did.
And yâ'all may remember the story
I've told about how my mom and dad tried to cure my childhood asthma with a
Chihuahua dog. Seems they'd been told Chihuahua dogs would actually suck a
child's asthma into itself and suffer for the child and they knew it was
true because the fool who told them used as evidence of its effectiveness
this that Xavier Cugat had a Chihuahua he didn't suffer from asthma.
So they bought the dog and I tried my
best to play with him but as he was the meanest dog I've ever known it was a
challenge to even get close enough to try and breathe my asthma on him and
not get my leg bit off at the same time.
But it didn't work. The more I
breathed on that dog the meaner he got and the worse I got. Maybe
if I'd chewed up some of those curiously strong Altoids my breath wouldn't
offend him so bad.
But finally, as my consumption
increased and I started to decline, mom and dad finally broke down and took
me to the allergy doctor. After a few tests he said what I was allergic to
the most was dog hair.
And if all this wasn't bad enough
somebody told him about all the curing powers held in vitamins and man he
went wild. Went down to the drugstore and bought a bottle of every kind they
had and found him cure all vitamin handbook that had a vitamin that cured
everything from gonorrhea to the seven years itch. Any unfortunate soul who
made the mistake of mentioning near him he was ailing from something would
cause the Old Man to get a fire in his eyes like a pew jumping preacher,
pull out his vitamin book and light to that sucker like he was preaching to
the heathen.
He did everything with those vitamins
except grind them up, yell ooh eeh oohahah, ting tang wallawalla tingtang
and blow 'em on you like a witch doctor casting a spell.
Luckily he grew out of this vitamin
phase before he killed somebody.
But if you any of y'all get this
forwarded cure all email and believe any of that crud, just let me know.
Next time your sick I'll get the Old Man to dust off his old vitamin book
and bring him over to see you. He beats heck out a forwarded email and he's
a whole lot more entertaining.
Copyright 2006 William Melton
