And We Lived…

On top of ole’ smokey….the sulfur on the top of Etna upper right

Was looking at photos of when I walked around on top of Mt. Etna with the smell of sulfur wafting through the air.  I recalled a sulfur spring I and my high school buddy, David, found on one of our hikes throughout NE Oklahoma.  Then, I remembered the sulfa powder that my parents poured into the open cuts I got as a kid.  We lived.

How about the carbon tetrachloride in the gallon jugs in our garage that my father brought home from work.  When I used it to clean an oil spill, I felt so great breathing those fumes—wondering now how many brain cells I fried.  It’s now banned.

Or, the red merthiolate my mother used to coat the back of my sore throat with a swab.  Awful!  Gag!  It too is banned now, it contained mercury. 

I recall telling mom when I was young that when I shut one eye, the television was blurry.  It wasn’t until an exam in third grade that I became ‘four eyes’.  Kids were cruel to boys who wore glasses back then. 

And the winner, did doctor Spock declare that the cure for about anything was an enema? One of my earliest memories is standing naked in the bathtub with my parents holding the enema bag high above my head repeatedly telling me to hold it, hold it, hold it!  What a memory.   

Then there were the dumb stunts I individually and collectively did with friends—and I STILL made it to this day.  

We are survivors.  Hang in there.