Mom always had a remedy for what ailed you

I’ve got to admit I’ve never been too regular about

getting my flu shot every year. I’m not too sure why I picked a year to get it when some say the vaccine is only 10 percent effective.

I’m not sure if I have the real flu or not. I’ve always been suspicious of folks who come down with the flu midweek and are just fine by the weekend. That’s not to say that I don’t believe they are sick, I just think a lot of illnesses get tabbed as flu when they probably are just a cold.

Researchers say the average person will only contract the flu about every five years. If that is true I know a lot of folks that are sickly exceptions to that rule.

I’ve had the real flu before and I know just how bad it can be so I don’t make snap diagnoses. If you get the real flu you alternate between sweating profusely and not being able to get warm no matter how many blankets you pile on. You can’t get rested and you don’t feel like eating.

I may actually have the flu this time around, though the symptoms aren’t as severe as I think they should be. When the illness first came on I wasn’t sure if it was a bug or my back causing the body aches. It is apparent now it is not just my back.

Growing up my parents didn’t hold much with malingering children lying in bed with fake illnesses. Even if we had the flu, chances are we would first be asked to get ready for school, then see how we felt. This separated the sick children from the malingerers pretty quickly.

If we stayed home we were subjected to various home and over the counter remedies, depending on the symptoms.

For an upset stomach 7-Up was the trick. It was technically a clear liquid, which is what doctors were always ordering and the carbonation probably did sooth the stomach to some degree. If we had diarrhea the cure was Kaopectate, a medicine that had to have been ground up blackboard chalk with a little bit of milk in it.

If we had a chest cold we got Ben Gay rubbed onto our chest until the tears flowed, then mom would safety pin a kitchen towel around our neck to keep all that heat penetrating down into our chest.

The family cough medicine was so notorious that no one dared complain or let mom hear you coughing. She ground up peppermint sticks and put it to steeping in whiskey as soon as the cold season started. By the time you got sick it might have set atop the refrigerator getting stronger and stronger for a couple of months. Two tablespoons of that stuff would stop your cough immediately though and you slept really good for the rest of the night.

I’m not going to complain too much about how I feel because I know my mom will know exactly what I need.

Honest mom, I’m feeling better now. I think I can go to school.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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