Kids today have no idea how easy they have it and that is most evident when it comes to home healthcare.
I don’t mean having a doctor come to your house or your dad perform some invasive surgery, just the very routine, day-to-day type things that happen in every household. For example, now they have these handheld scanners that can take your temperature. Like a magic ray gun from an episode of Buck Rogers, you just point it at a kid’s forehead, push a button and it tells you their temperature. I remember the first time I heard a commercial on the radio for one, it touted the fact that you wouldn’t even have to rouse your sick child from their recuperative slumber to take their temperature anymore. Nope, you can just point the magic laser zapper thing at their sweet, angelic forehead and push a button, never waking them up in the process. Or, you know, if your kid is really fidgety, there’s no more struggles to make them sit still and hold a digital thermometer under their tongue, just zappity zap and you know if there are at 98.6 degrees like they’re supposed to be.
When I was a little kid, the method for seeing if a kid had a fever wasn’t so easy or pleasant. How many young people would even believe me if I told them, “You know, when I was a small child and they feared I might be feverish, they took a glass tube full of deadly poison and stuck it up, um, in a really uncomfortable place.”
“Why would they do that, old man?”
“Well see, I guess they thought a kid wouldn’t just sit there calmly and hold a thermometer under their tongue, so they took the tongue out of the equation entirely. And funny enough, despite being placed in something smaller than your mouth, it was actually bigger than the one that goes under your tongue.”
“Why was there poison in the thermometer?”
“It turns out that particular kind of deadly poison doubles as a very accurate temperature teller.”
“What if it broke?”
“Oh, that wouldn’t been bad. First off, the pain would have been excruciating. Then also you’d have all that poison in you.”
“I bet you hated being sick.”
“It was actually quite a motivation to be healthy, or at least to lie about feeling bad.”
Then there were the “medicines” that parents gave to their kids. I had an aunt that swore if you just gargled with hydrogen peroxide, it would fix whatever was wrong with you.
“What is that stuff oldster?”
“It’s a chemical compound used to sterilize instruments in surgery. Also it is used to bleach hair and kill bacteria in waste treatment plants.”
“That doesn’t sound like something you should have in your mouth.”
“No, it sure doesn’t. Especially way in the back of your throat where you could accidentally swallow it. If you had a sore throat, or fever, or a broken ankle, though, she’d make you gargle with that stuff and then pronounce you to be all better. That’s not as bad as Castor oil, though.”
“What is that, Peepaw?”
“It’s this disgusting, viscous stuff you’d be given spoonfuls of that was made from some kind of bean. I think it was mostly to treat a slow-moving digestive cycle, but they also used to give it to pregnant women to help induce birth and anything else they thought was wrong with you between the chest and hips.”
“Was this stuff recommended by physicians?”
“Probably not. But we lived way out in the country, so going to a doctor was a long trip and kind of a bother, so unless you were attacked by a bear or something, they tried to handle it in-house. So after they put the glass tube full of poison in that most uncomfortable locations and figured you had a fever and then if the hair bleach gargle didn’t fix it, they’d make you choke down a spoonful or two of this oil, which is also used as an industrial lubricant and additive in biodiesel.”
“So you were drinking gas, basically?”
“Sort of, yes. Did I mention the ancient Egyptians used it as fuel for their lamps?”
“So the cure for whatever ailed you was flammable bean juice?”
“Yes, now aren’t you glad you were born when you were?”
Incidentally, I looked online and those thermometers I mentioned are still made and sold. I saw one that looked almost exactly like the temperature gage I stick in meat when I’m grilling to make sure it gets to the appropriate temperature. Have to get an accurate reading on your rump roast.
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