Say yes to drugs

My Bible study group often holds lively and interesting discussions, not all of them on topics directly related to the Bible. Recently, for instance, some of the women were talking about how their imaginative offspring often get around the dreaded task of taking medicine when they are sick. Some appear to take it willingly, only to store it up in their cheeks, chipmunk-like, and dispose of it in some imaginative manner later, generally in a non-sick sibling's shoe. The parent remains blissfully unaware of this until, after it has happened some five or six times, the parent realizes that the sick child is not getting better, and that the non-sick child appears to be having trouble walking.

Other children shut their lips so tightly together when faced with a spoonful of something that they put duct tape to shame. Some boldly spit the medicine back into the parent's face. "Let's see how you like this junk" is apparently their motto.

To my knowledge, this particular topic is not addressed in the Bible, although surely in biblical times children were just as imaginative as they are today. I'm sure, for instance, that during the Quail Days of the Exodus, children who just could not stomach another bird would hide it under their robes. Of course, one imagines that as time went on -- as the pile of dead quails got higher and higher and nothing else to eat was forthcoming -- the parents would have caught on to this. Instead of rebuking their children, however, the parents -- mainly the dads -- would have thought "That is a GREAT idea!" and started hiding quails under their robes. When a wife, seeing her husband's robe start to bulge suspiciously, would remark, "You seem to be getting a little paunchy, dear," her husband would say something like "Ha ha! That quail just goes right to my waistline."

But I admit I was rather shocked to hear what lengths kids go to when they don't want to take their meds. I took plenty of medicine when I was a kid, and it never once occurred to me to try to refuse it. Partly, of course, this was because I was a good kid who did pretty much everything I was told (although I did not really see, for quite some time, the necessity of learning to do without a diaper) and I was not imaginative enough to pretend to take something and then spit it out later. But mostly, I readily took whatever medicine my mom dispensed because -- this is true -- I thought most medicine tasted fantastic.

Really. St. Joseph's Aspirin for Children, in orange-flavored, chewable tablets? Cherry Benadryl for allergies? They were as good as a hot dog or ice cream, in my book. It was almost worth getting sick or having an allergy attack just to get a taste of them.

One exception, of course, even for me, was cough syrup. I'll admit that if I had ever thought about not taking something, it would have been cough syrup. And with all the advances in medicine in the years since I was a kid, cough syrup does not seem to have come very far. Maybe they're just recycling all the cough syrup that has been refused by children over the generations. "Until all of the present supply is gone," scientists are probably warning, "we're not going to make anything that tastes any better!"

But that was the exception. Everything else I just lapped up or swallowed like it was candy, which, due to my mother's tendency to describe things in terms that are somewhat misleading, I probably thought it was. Deceived or not, I didn't care. It might as well have been candy.

So even though part of me secretly admires and even envies kids who creatively fight back against the injustice of having pills and syrups forced upon them, I also feel somewhat sorry for them. They just don't know what they're missing.