Easy Queasy

I’m one of those people who can get turned off their food depending on the turn the conversation takes.

It’s nothing anyone else can really predict.  I can talk about what happened to my liver last year in excruciating detail, if you think you can take it and you ask me to, but if someone brings up some sort of gross body growth or talks about disgusting secretions without warning I can be put off my pasta for the night.

This comes to mind whenever I see an ad for the new “phlegm and mucus” cough syrup.  Phlegm and mucus are not pleasant.  And I see no reason why they have to be said out loud on my television or, as occurred on New Year’s Day, on the movie screen.  Several times. What was wrong with saying “congestion” or “stuffiness”?  It’s just not necessary for them to break it down to its base ingredients.

We’re not all jaded by having urchins with various wet illnesses running around our ankles. I’m amazed at how many parents will post a clear, close-up photo on Facebook of their kid with a snotty, runny nose.  It isn’t cute!  It isn’t adorable. It’s frigging awful is what it is. Wipe that thing before picking up the iPhone, please.  And then go get some of that cough syrup.

Here’s what really worries me.   Will the makers of feminine protection start going all medical on us now too?  For now they’re using blue liquid to demonstrate absorption but what if they – horror of horrors – decide to put a bit of reality into it?  Is this the coming end of the delicate euphemism?  Their ads used to show a beautiful woman riding on a horse and left the rest to your imagination.  What if they start drawing us a picture?  And if they do, why not apply it to everything?  Let’s stop calling it pork. Let’s call it dead pig or better yet, shank of Babe.  This is how concerned I am about the proliferation of mucus and phlegm on products and packaging.  It’s a slippery slope and I think we’re sliding down it on a river of… a river of…. no supper, for me, thanks.