Away Off Topic...a Short Story

[Kip Powick]

Note:.. This is NOT a true story. Both the Admiral, (Diane),and I picked up bad colds over the holiday season. I happened to mention this in an email. The rely to my email was written by the wife of a couple that we do a lot of boating with and in her reply she had suggested that The Admiral smear Vicks on the bottom of her feet when she went to bed as that is supposed to ease the ill effects of having a stuffy head etc. One only has to check the INet and find that there is no definitive proof that this “wives-tale” medical advice works so we were not going to indulge our friend…..but …..I thought I would send her a note detailing what happened when we “tried” her medical suggestion. This is the attachment I sent her.

I guess I was a bit fast in pooh-poohing your advice about using Vicks on ones feet. Diane saw the email and said “Dorothy is quite a bright smart individual so maybe it really does work”. I thought about it and decided that maybe, just maybe I would try the “voodoo” magic when Di went to bed. Di decided to turn in early so I went to hunt for the Vicks……..I found Vicks Nyquil and other assorted over the counter stuff and I really didn’t think if I painted the soles of Di’s feet with Nyquil it would be too beneficial. The problem got me wondering ……what would MacGyver do?? I think, and I’m probably right, MacGyver would improvise.

I looked around and found a full package of Halls Mentholated cough drops as well as ½ package of Excel Mentholated cough lozenges, the difference between the two was that the Excel had soft gooey centres and as I had used both types I knew they certainly tasted like sucking on Vicks.

I decided to melt them down into a paste so got a Pyrex bowl out of the cupboard, dropped in all the 'medical candy' with just enough water to cover them as I did not want to dilute the menthol too much. Popped the bowl into the microwave and set it for about 3 minutes. About 90 seconds had passed when I heard popping signs and peeked in the microwave. Apparently the gel filled cough drops were exploding and there was goo everywhere. Stopped the microwave, pulled out the bowl but the mixture wasn’t quite soft enough so came up with the idea of using a pan on the stove. What worried me was that the stuff, at this stage was very sticky and I didn’t want to ruin a pan.

Fortunately, for Christmas, our daughter had given Di one of those newest fry pans that have an advanced covering on the inside. It is better than T-Fal and absolutely nothing sticks to them. The package actually had a series of photos on it where they had smeared epoxy on the end of brick, placed in the pan…baked it and then you see a photo of the brick and epoxy sliding right out of the pan. It also had those new, almost like ebony, no heat/always cool, handles. It is a very expensive pan and I sure as hell did not want to ruin it but thought it was the best bet.

I poured the gooey lump into the pan and put it on low heat. About 10 minutes later it was warm and almost the consistency of Vicks. I took it down to the bedroom and had Di slide her feet out from under the covers and used a paint-brush, (thank goodness for the Dollar Store), and literally painted the bottom of her feet. I know she wouldn’t want to get the sheets all gooey so I slipped a brand new pair of white socks onto her feet and she slid under the sheets and went to sleep.

I adjourned to the Rec room and watched a movie that I had illegally downloaded and at about 11:30pm I went upstairs to clean up the mess. I tackled the microwave first. There is no doubt that the candies were very sticky, makes you wonder what they do inside your stomach. I finally resorted to a hammer and chisel and knocked the majority of the blobs out of the microwave except while trying to get a particularly sticky chunk out, the chisel slipped, went through the fibre mesh screen that guards the internal light bulb and unfortunately smashed the bulb…so now I had no light inside the microwave. I don’t have any of those sport ‘headlamps’ at home - they are in the boat, so I just put one of those small Home Hardware LED flashlights, (bought on special for $1.99), between my teeth and finished the job. I got the bulb out after I removed the screen with a very tiny screwdriver but most of the glass must have dropped down into the guts of the microwave. Hopefully it will not affect the performance of the microwave. I will get a bulb for the machine soon but I did notice that with no light in it the 5 inch gash left by the chisel slipping is hardly noticeable.

The Pyrex bowl was a “write-off”. Everything was just like poured concrete on more poured concrete so I took the bowl and hid it in the bottom of the trash container. Next was the ‘new’ fry-pan. The stuff was really stuck on it but I did manage to get the majority of the candy off and did not damage the pan, a very slick pan, but it certainly did look like it was ‘used’. I felt I could finish the job by using my Dremel and soft-touch attachment on it. (If you don’t know what a Dremel is it sorta looks like a hand mixer but the drill bit end can have a multitude of different attachments inserted in it and it is variable speed, anywhere from about 200 RPM to 5000RPM).

I went down to the workshop and managed to squeeze in as it is very crowded. We keep a lot of the boat stuff there during the winter and also use it for storage of 24s of bottled water and those 6 packs of plastic bottled coke. I got the ‘soft- touch’ attachment inserted in the Dremel and went to work. The ‘soft- touch’ was doing the job and it actually looked like there would be no damage to the surface of the pan. I had been working on it for about 30 minutes and I guess I got a little complacent as the soft-touch attachment caught the edge of the pan wrenched it out of my hand and flung it like a Frisbee across the crowded room. The edge of the pan caught one of the bottles in a 6 pack of coke, decapitated its top and punctured the bottle next to it. After the noise of the explosion died down I looked at the end result. The pan was almost perfectly clean but the impact had snapped the ‘cool-hand’ handle off. I took the pan and hid it in the bottom of the trash can as well. I’m not sure, but seeing coke is a liquid, I would hope all the stuff that has run down the wall and over the other cases of water and soft drinks will evaporate by the morning.

Di had a pretty peaceful night, just a bit of light coughing but she called for me just after she got up. Apparently she couldn’t get the socks completely off. She got them rolled down to the bottom of her feet but from then on, it was if we had used crazy glue on the soles of her feet, and unfortunately between a few toes. I suggested she have her hot shower but she wanted the socks off. We compromised and I took a pair of scissors and cut the socks off …down to the soles of her feet….and she had a shower, as hot as possible. That didn’t work.

I spent about 30 minutes with a hairdryer blow drying her feet and that damned candy is still holding fast. It actually looked like she had Swifter’s attached to her feet. She didn’t take kindly to my suggestion that she should go and ‘skate’ around the hardwood floors while I think of a solution.

Anyhow the only course of action I can see is waiting until I can get the car out from underneath1/2 inch of clear ice and perhaps put some salt on the driveway, drive to Canadian Tire, as we don’t have any nail polish remover here, and buy a can of acetone and soak Di’s feet in a bowl of that chemical soup and hope for the best.

Another thing I will probably never hear the end of.

[conehead]

Fantastic! I think the version of this cold remedy I heard was applying the Vicks to the upper surface of the feet...

Anyway, great story Kip!

[Moon The Loon]

That's one for Stuart McLean!

[anonymous]

Stuart's stories are way too syrupy-sweet and so predictable and contrived and the "humour" (I use that term loosely) is pathetic.

Does anyone give a cr@p about Dave & Morley??????

If his stories weren't enough, his monotonic delivery (he gives Margaret Atwood a run for the money) either causes the average listener to drop off into a coma or if exposed for too long, cardio-respiratory distress

He is often touted as a great Canadian humourist and award winning....all I can say is if he's the best we have, we're in pathetic shape, humour-wise.

I like CBC radio but Stuart only has a career because of CBC