But It’s Good for You!

440px-Poison_Help.svgThe morning after I helped my neighbor shear his sheep, I could hardly get out of bed.

All I had asked of my muscles is that they spend a few hours wrestling mutton. They said it was too much, so I ignored them.

Now they were getting back at me.

“Take an Ibuprofen,” my wife suggested.

I didn’t say a word. I was too engrossed watching her..

She first removed the lid from the blender – then visited the refrigerator for milk and yogurt. Next she poured the milk and ladled the yogurt into the blender before returning to the vegetables drawer for spinach.

I couldn’t help myself.

“What are you putting in there?” I asked.

“Broccoli, spinach, carrots, milk, yogurt and protein powder.”

“It looks awful.’

“But it’s…”

“…good for you,” I guessed.

She finished filling the blender and fired it up. It whirled, gargled and churned, reducing the ingredients into a concoction as green as moldy bread.

“My God!” I exclaimed, “it’s the color of Mr. Yuk!”

“But it’s yummy,” she insisted.

“You need to listen to Mother Nature.” I told her, “she invented yucky as a way of telling you that something is not good for you.”

“What do you know about what is good for you?” she asked, “you are the one who can barely get out of bed.”

She had me there.

“Are you going to do something about it?” she asked.

“Nope,” I said, “pain is Mother Nature’s way of talking to you and when she speaks, you give her your full attention.”

“So you are not going to take an Ibuprofen?”

“That would be rude,” I said, “masking pain is like using ear-plugs to ignore what someone is saying.”

My wife rolled her eyes. She does that a lot.

It’s our existential conflict. She believes life can be made happier and healthier simply by taking something. I prefer to nurture my misery.

She puts faith in things like pills and potions. We have an entire cupboard devoted to weight-loss remedies, vitamins and orange vials with child-proof caps.

We have bins of bottles whose labels boldly promise things like Vitality, Renewal and Replenishment. All we need is a big bottle of Redemption.

But mostly, these things are just placebos.

I look at it this way, if Mother Nature wanted us to take pills, she would provide us with a pill-tree or maybe a pill bush. Come to think of it, she did. It’s called apples and blue-berries. A little fresh fruit is a whole lot better than a cupboard full of potions.

But why argue about it?

“I’m taking Scooter for a long walk,” I told her as I pulled on my boots.

“I thought you were sore.”

“I am, really sore.”

“Then why don’t you take it easy? Listen to Mother Nature.”

“Just because I am listening,” I told her, “doesn’t mean I have to do what she says.”

Author: Almost Iowa

www.almostiowa.com

23 thoughts on “But It’s Good for You!”

    1. What is it about men and pain pills?

      Guys (still) tend to be more physical. We take on the majority of tough and dangerous jobs. We play too hard. We do stupid things. In the process, we learn to work through pain. We also learn not to mask our pain.

      Guys like to toughen themselves up. It is natures way of preparing them for the times when they need to be tough. Like when a neighbor asks for help shearing sheep.

      1. I’ve also read studies on women and pain (finally) that indicate women suffer more kinds of chronic pain, and are more sensitive to chronic pain than men.

        Put that together with your explanation and it all begins to make sense 😋

  2. Great post with delightful dialogue, Almost Iowa! My favorite line: “It’s the color of Mr. Yuk!” (And I say that even though I like healthy food with bad hues.)

  3. I knew you’d be hurting the morning after! I’m with you on this one being very reluctant to take anything for anything. The concept of rushing off to the doctor because I don’t happen to feel good is foreign to me probably because of my unsympathetic mother (German, remember?) who would just put us to bed with a hot water bottle. It was no fun being sick so we generally weren’t.

    1. You said I would be hurting and I was. [nasty sheep, grumble, grr]

      A hot-water bottle? You were lucky. My mother employed an arsenal of foul remedies to combat our inflictions. Remember Vicks Vapor Rub and cod liver oil? Talk about Mr. Yuk!

  7. “…if Mother Nature wanted us to take pills, she would provide us with a pill-tree or maybe a pill bush. Come to think of it, she did.”

    She did, indeed. The plaquenil pill I take daily for my lupus is quinine, from the the chinona pill-tree. The colchicine pill I take daily for my Behcet’s comes from the autumn crocus, or meadow saffron pill-plant (or used to). Mother Nature has been very generous with her pill-trees, bushes, and flowers, and for that, I am extremely grateful : )

    And, by the way, I am extremely interested in getting in on your wife’s wait-loss remedies. If I can recoup even a fraction of the lost time spent waiting in doctor’s offices, I would be a happier woman!

      1. I hesitated going for it ’cause didn’t wanna be critical, but that one was too good. There OUGHTA be a wait-loss cure–other than the one you mentioned : )

          1. The most valuable tool for self-editing is patience – but we take so many of those wait-loss pills that I get too anxious to hold off hitting the Publish Button. Maybe if I spent more time folding and refolding all our paper bags and organizing the tissue paper and arranging the napkins and checking under the snow to see how the grass is growing……… oh, maybe wait-loss pills are not so good for you.

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