When I was in high school I went on a bit of a health kick. Ok, a major health kick. For about a year I wouldn't eat chips, or french fries, ice cream, candy, or any other good thing. In fact, for about a year I ate lentil soup with whole wheat toast, cottage cheese and a salad for lunch- every day. How virtuous. And boring.
On top of that crazy eating regime I started taking multi-vitamins that my mom had bought from one of my Aunts. They weren't just any old vitamins, they were top of the line, health nut vitamins. You know, the ones with the packaging that shows a man and woman hiking and the man has thighs that could crush a walnut shell, while the woman has a long blonde ponytail with pink flushed cheeks. She's the kind of woman that smiles triumphantly like Mona Lisa from the box, except her secret is that along with the vitamins (which explain her exceptionally healthy pink cheeks) she also does liposuction a few times a year and has a personal trainer, so with the vitamins alone you will never look as good as her.
Anyhow, I started taking these vitamins each morning before early morning seminary and expected to look like her within a few weeks. And I might have (right...), except something happened that ruined me on powdered vitamins for the rest of my life.
It was about 5 am and I was downstairs in the kitchen grabbing a glass of water and one of those vitamins before I went upstairs to take a shower. The vitamin was of average size and in a gel case that would dissolve in your stomach, therefore allowing your body to absorb the vitamins quicker. This morning however, something went amiss with the vitamin when I went to swallow it. Instead of swallowing the sucker down, the gel turned into its own form of super glue and attached itself to my throat just out of reach. I tried drinking some water to wash it down but it didn't help and after a few moments I figured that eventually those muscles would do their job and move it down to my stomach by themselves.
In the shower I washed my hair, shaved my legs, drank some water and yet still the feeling of having the vitamin there lingered. I wondered if it was just a phantom sense or if it really was still lurking there.
Out of the shower I dried my hair and thought surely all the tossing of my head while I blow dried would loosen the subborn pill. But still the pill persisted, although unbeknownst to me it was ever weakening...
It wasn't until I was doing my make-up that things start moving along. I had applied my powder, some blush (pre bronzer days), eye liner and was just finishing my last set of lashes with mascara when the gel capsule burst. The vitamin powder trickled down my throat causing a tickle that created a powerful reaction. Before I had time to even move the mascara wand from my eyelashes the most violent cough of mankind erupted from my throat making the next scene possible.
The force of the cough jammed the brush all over my eye, giving me a temporary blackened eye while powdered vitamins blew in all directions of the bathroom. It was scary to experience, but even scarier to watch in the mirror. Picture this:
Black eye that looks as if it's been poked out while the other is bulging from the vigor of the cough; and an open mouth that is spewing out powder like a horror novel that would have made even Stephan King envious. It would have been better if I had been touching up my make-up in the high school bathroom at prom, but we can't have everything. What was worse was it was the vitamin that just kept giving. There was not one cough but many and for the first few the powder just kept flowing.
I was like a powder spewing dragon, or the little dinosaur on Jurassic Park. I was subhuman. Imagine being able to harness that power so you could use it as a bargaining chip.
"Watch out." Uncle George would say at Thanksgiving dinner. "Just give her the loan Jane, she's got that look in her eye..."
I looked at my evil black eye and the bathroom counter covered in "health dust" and vowed to never consume a powdered vitamin again. It was like sucking on a multi vitamin as hard candy for the rest of the day. Not something that you would willingly want to do. Since then I have not kept my vow, I have taken powdered multivitamins. But not without a little shudder, and the desperate urge to spray my throat with Pam to protect me from that ever happening again. And Stephan King- eat your heart out for a true mouth spewing horror story.
