Wednesday, November 25, 2009
5:14 PM
A Spoon Full of Sugar Does NOT Help the Medicine Go Down
When I was a kid, most medicine was packaged either in glass bottles or tin boxes. Two medicines that you could find in every household in America were these. Before Tylenol and Advil came on the scene, Bayer was everyone's go-to med for aches, pains, and fever. That's why these containers bring back sweet memories for me. Nobody likes taking medicine. I was one of those kids who would literally kick and scream if you tried to force me to take medicine, as a rule. I couldn't swallow a pill until I was in high school and I couldn't get an adult Bayer aspirin down until jr. high. Even THEN, my mom had to smash it, water it down, and give it to me in semi-liquid form. Of course, I wasn't any better at taking liquid meds so anytime I needed heavy-duty meds, it was a tough day in our house. I was not much of a trouper when it came to such things. LOL The one exception to this rule was "baby aspirins". They were actually Bayer Children's Aspirins (the ones in the pink-capped bottles in the pics above) but in my house, they were referred to as "baby aspirins" and that's what I called them well into my high school years. It never really dawned on me (not that I gave it a lot of thought) that that really wasn't their name.
Baby aspirins were a pink-orange color and they contained some sort of sweetner which helped counteract the bitterness of the aspirin tablet, itself. Bayer aspirins are terribly bitter when taken alone so I was very, very grateful for the children's flavoring they added to the baby aspirins. It didn't take all of the bitterness away but it made the taste MUCH more palatable. I couldn't swallow them whole because, as I stated earlier, I couldn't swallow pills without gagging and spitting them out so I had to chew aspirins up before swallowing them. There was just no way in the world I could do that with an adult aspirin so once I got older, I would take a slightly larger dose of the children's aspirins rather than taking the adult tablets. For someone like me, who had such a hard time talking myself into swallowing meds of any kind, baby aspirins were a Godsend. For the first 18 years of my life, I depended on them almost exclusively when I got sick. So I remember that sweet little clear bottle with the pink lid, and pink/blue label quite fondly. Of course, I also remember it fondly because my sweet mama was always there to love on me and take good care of me whenever I didn't feel well. When I see this sweet little bottle, I see her precious face and her gentle hands, handing the tablets to me, her "baby girl" and I am reminded once again, of how blessed and loved I was in spite of all the chaos that inhabited our home, because God chose her to be my mother.