The past week chez Chommo and Kim Jong-Illmatic has been full of nothing but sore throats, snot-filled noses, achy limbs, congested heads, half-days at work and prayers to various deities that we had not contracted the swine flu. Thank Jeebus, we are already on the mend and appear to have escaped Porky Pig’s revenge.
Still, it was a pretty miserable week at our Brooklyn pad, and not just because all the cold medicine I was taken made me mistake the Manhattan Bridge for the Brooklyn Bridge. When I’m sick, I like nothing more than to be left alone, a self-contained bundle of misery snuggled up in bed with my comforter and a trashy historical romance novel (they cure all ills); Kim Jong-Illmatic, on the other hand, likes to be doted on, catered to, taken care of, blahblahblah treated like a precious wittle baby. It’s never good when we get together at the same time, since all we do is get irritated at each other and wish out loud that we had a second bedroom because goddamn are you loud and annoying and I don’t want to share a bed with you and could you please stop sniffling and touching me and I think it’s your turn to go sleep on the couch. Yeah, fun times.
But in the midst of all the cold-induced misery, there was a bright, shining, in-the-same-category-as-unicorns-rainbows-and-YSL-faux-cils-mascara gold-silver lining: my discovery of Puffs Plus tissues with Vicks®.
YOU GUYS! OH.EM.GEE.
More than the consciousness-altering Sudafed, more than the generic cough drops, more than the Lipton noodle soup with potatoes that, fine, Kim Jong-Illmatic prepared for me because he loves me, it was these wonderful shreds of soft paper that got me through the week.
Forget how they felt against my raw skin, forget their booger-absorbing capabilities – it was the smell. The smell. The smell. They smelled like childhood. Like home. Like my mom taking care of me and stroking my hair and murmuring “my poor baby” whenever I went into a coughing fit. They smelled fabulous and great and happy and familiar.
I don’t know what things are like in your culture, but Dominicans have long had a passionate love affair with Vicks VaporRub®. Except that they call it “vee-vah-poh-roo”; I was well into my teenage years when I first realized that the name all the adults called it was a phonetic Spanish interpretation of the English name on the label.
In addition to a disgusting-but-effective homemade concotion of honey, salt, and onions (yeah…I know. It tasted exactly as disgusting as it sounds, but it worked like a mother), vee-vah-poh-roo was the go-to remedy for colds and coughs in our house. We always, always had several tubs of it strewn around the apartment. When I was a kid (i.e., until I moved out of my parents house when I married Kim Jong-Illmatic), my mom would whip it out at the first sign of a cough or cold. She would rub it on my back. Before the debut of my boobsicles, she would rub it on my chest. She would plunk a few tablespoonfuls in boiling water and force me to inhale the piney aroma to clear up my congestion. She’d dab some on my temples and my throat. She’d send me off to school (…or, you know, work) smelling like what I imagine old people and nursing home smell like, and it would take several washes for the scent to come out of my clothes. In addition to the unguent, we also had the cylindrical sticks that you could stick up your nose. Those were fun too, if slightly unhygienic.
I can’t really remember if vee-vah-poh-roo actually did anything to ameliorate my cough, but man did we believe in its healing powers. Kim Jong-Illmatic and I don’t have any tubs of Vicks VaporRub® in our house, probably because we tend to go for medication in pill rather than pomade form.
But damn it if I didn’t spend the majority of this week shoving my nose in handfuls of Puffs Plus tissues with Vicks®, taking ginormagantuan, spine-tingling sniffs like I was Lindsay Lohan and this was my last bag of the good stuff. It smelled sooooo gooood.
And yes, I have a giant fistful pressed to my nose right now. But I can quit whenever I can. I swear it. Cross my heart and hope to die. I can quit right now. Right now. Just let me take one last sniff. I just need this little last bit to get me through the day. Then I’ll quit. I promise. No need to call the Intervention producers on me.
Also, not for nothing but – they absorb boogers pretty well.
© Chommo, 2009.