I was removing the paper from a mentholated, cough suppressing oral analgesic when I noticed a message written on the wrapping: “High five yourself.” What? I had gobbled a ton of those drops without once reading the wrapping. When I spread it out, I found other sayings.
This past December, on a visit my Grandchild Delivery Device (my eldest daughter) and my grandpups, I entered a fevered storm of coughs and snot. I am someone who does not get sick easily, so I deflected illness for a week before I was struck down. I slept for about a day then leapt up, cured. But flu season hit shortly after I came back to Indiana, so I graciously participated in the wave of yackness by getting what I like to call “the snort and sploofles”: a cold. Hot tea with honey and lemon is my usual coldfighter, but I occasionally add in Halls® cough drops. I don’t know when the cough drop wrapper became the external version of the inner bubblegum wrappers I used to read as a child, but I wondered if someone at the Mentho-Lyptus company was trying to connect “happy thoughts” with the “triple soothing action” of the little orbs.
I do not know how many different little sayings the company has imprinted on its wrappers — the bag I purchased was an 80 count — but my cough and sore throat sneaked out the door while I read the wrappers and imagined scenarios that might apply to the sayings.
“Buckle down, and push forth.” I think that was what Bride Two was told when it came time to deliver our daughter. She pushed for six hours (no one ever believes that) until finally our daughter was from her mother’s womb, timely ripp’d. (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 8.)
“Turn ‘can do’ into ‘can did.’” This one applies to The Mighty 600. Each Friday, my editor sits at her desk, tapping her fingers and wondering when my 600 words will ping her inbox. I used to have a reserve of columns built up so that when inspiration was lacking, or my undercover operation extended longer than expected, a solution could be drawn from the vault. Lately, I have been operating on the edge and have to remind myself that I should do it now, so that Ethel can say that I did. This bromide coordinates nicely with “You can do it and you know it;” and “Conquer today.”
I wondered about the copywriters on wrapper duty: is this a coveted job, a starter, or an end-of-writing-life experience? Not to put too fine a point on this, but this is not Pulitzer-worthy writing. (I just had a thought: there is probably an app for that. “Banalities And Bromides™” comes to mind.) But in my “bag ‘o bromides” (distributed by a company headquartered in Parsippany, NJ, home of my grandbeauties) there was a wrapper that had this notation: “A PEP TALK IN EVERY DROP™” Well, alrighty. I then crafted my own thing, a “pep song” so to speak, which drew its inspiration from singer/songwriter Bobby McFerrin:
“Read the bromide here I wrote, / To wrap this menthol drop of note, / Don’t sicky, be happy!”
There might have been some research done and evidence compiled linking a happy attitude to physical wellbeing, but I didn’t look for it. Sometimes, merely believing a thing can make it so. So, as we crawl out of the last of that startling phenomenon, “Snow In February,” let me leave you with these last words from the menthol cough drop people:
“Conquer today.”