The Begats

Dear Nasty Cough,

I know you are having a great time visiting Robby's chest and you and all the mucus have made plans to start filming a new commercial for that productive cough medicine. I know mucus has already picked up his greenest slimiest suit from the pea soup factory. Despite all of this it is simply time to go.

All the scary FDA warnings and investigations about cold medicines and children under six were a brilliant strategy. In fact, they worked for almost a week now. The fatal flaw in your devious plan to invade his bronchial tubes was that you forgot the begats.

Alma was a farmer's wife for more than 50 years. Deep in the Ozarks, she raised more children than the typical Mormon family of today. She had no local pharmacy or FDA to aid her in healing the many illness and diseases that struck her children over the years. Instead, she had good old fashioned common sense. It was this common sense applied to whatever medicine or home remedy she had at her disposal that drove all those childhood coughs and colds away.

Alma begat Alice, know as "the kerosene lady" in one Arizona hospital. When her grandchild got stuck in a barbed wire fence in the woods, Alice applied kerosene to kill any nasty germs that might have been lurking in that fence. Then she took the child to the doctor as soon as they were back to where the doctors were. No lock jaw ever occurred, though some wish today that it would have.

Alice begat Norma Jean. The same Norma Jean who simply decided that because she and her son got food poisoning from a local Taco Bell, this would not be a place they would eat at again. Common sense in it purest form.

Norma Jean begat The Mama, and The Mama said screw the FDA, he's coughing up a lung and it will stop now. The Mama got out the Tussin CF and an oral syringe and fulfilled her maternal destiny tonight. Up yours cough!

Sincerely,
The Mama