Side Effects

Side Effects

By

Thomas Carlucci


If you think watching the evening news is depressing, watch commercials for medications. I discovered while at a 45º angle in my recliner, a score of different maladies that I never knew existed until a law was passed allowing these advertisements to educate me in my very own home during prime time.

For instance, you might be suffering from some obscure disease called Digititus Circle Reversal that causes your fingers to curl backwards. Well, taking medication X will fix that, but there are some side effects.

By taking medication X, you might suffer a side effect that causes spontaneous pregnancy, for instance. Perhaps you might find yourself consumed with the overwhelming desire to run onto the freeway during rush hour.

There’s more. You could be plagued with the worst case of runs you ever had, and you are confined to the john because you ran out of toilet paper and your spouse is at the supermarket buying every roll in the store.

Other side effects include hair growing out of your eye-balls, your ears drooping to your knees, or one butt cheek swelling to twice the size of the other.

After hearing all the side effects of those miraculous medications, I think I would rather suffer with the maladies than take any medications to treat them.

Welcome Labor Day!

Labor Day is like a logic circuit to me; as one gate closes another automatically opens. It signals the end of summer and the beginning of my favorite time of the year.

Football games every Sunday, Monday nights and sometimes on Saturdays, too. Then there is the all-important game on Thanksgiving Day.

The weather man forecasts cool fronts, rain, sometimes snow in higher elevations. Leaves are turning color and as they fall they blanket our lawns and litter the streets. Flocks of migrating birds can be both seen and heard overhead as they head south to wait out the winter in the north. Early morning school buses cruise through the neighborhoods picking up children and making people waiting in cars behind them impatient. Windows are opened to air out the summer and refresh our homes with the coolness of fall. All manner of winter clothing is removed from storage and hung in closets just waiting for Jack Frost to redden our noses and cheeks. Ah, there is much about this time of year that warms the cockles of my heart. How come those cockles don't show up in x-rays?

Parents see Christmas coming, usually faster than they want, but mum's the word. Perhaps if they don't mention Christmas it will not come so quickly. Although, plans are made, even if just in their thoughts, about lay-a-ways.

Stores, however, start putting up Christmas decorations and displays usually right after the second pop quiz in math. They can hardly wait for Christmas, hoping this one coming will be a boon for business that hasn't been seen for a few seasons.

Backyards are cleaned up and winterized, storm windows installed, lawnmowers serviced and stored and the snowblowers taken out of storage.

There are many tasks, both pleasant and laborious, that are awakened like a hibernating bear after Labor Day has passed into history. In spite of the prospect of a hard winter, people get excited, albeit to different degrees, about the coming holidays. Especially football enthusiasts.

I love the holidays. Except for one thing: I cannot take another viewing of "It's A Wonderful Life." Enough already. I'd rather be raking leaves then have to endure another broadcast of that movie. Yes, it is a wonderful movie; if you've never seen it before or can count on only one hand how many times you've seen it. When you have to go to the fingers of your other hand, that is too many times.

Let me be the first to wish all of you Happy Holidays, which includes Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year. Now, that should shorten my Christmas card list.