Miracle cures

It’s been about half an hour now, so I should be good. For a while, though, it was touch-and-go. It started with a hastily devoured meal, packing away food at a rate that would shame those impossibly skinny misfits who wolf hot dogs competitively. Then came the first involuntary hic.

 

Sometimes if you stop and notice that first hiccup, give it the attention it demands, you can harness mysterious body forces to will the process into submission. Really let it know who’s boss.

 

Hic.

 

Just not this time.

 

Nope, this was one of those fits that poses the greatest annoyance to the human body since the invention of neckties. A spurt of diaphragm contractions so rapid and intense, the only logical conclusion one can draw is that the chest cavity itself is slowly revolting, organizing a biological coup on the level of smoke-stained Panzer tanks and scowling army generals. It’s maybe (definitely) an unwarranted exaggeration to compare my chest to Hitler, but that’s what frustration has driven me to. Plus there’s a World War II documentary airing on the History Channel. Quick observation: He really didn’t trim his mustache very well.

 

Hic.

 

Everybody’s got a goofy home remedy for the hiccups, and most of them come from a scary aunt with warts on her knuckles. Mine was handed down to me from some forgotten relative, lost now to time, who told me that all I had to do was hold my breath, take a sip of water, swallow, exhale, then hold my breath again and repeat, and keep doing that through a medium-sized glass of water. I tried it, and it worked, and I still do it to this day; but even as I do it, the practical part of my mind is slowly shaking its head in shame. It knows the likely reason for the remedy’s success: Performing this foolish exercise makes the glass last about half an hour, by which time the hiccups have probably vanished anyway. The remedy, then, basically amounts to a kind of superstition, a wooden cross and garlic held up to the snarling face of that sneakiest and quietest of bodily afflictions, the Evil Hiccup. Capitalization definitely earned.

 

I think I had an inkling, even as a child, that there was something odd about this homespun hiccup trick. But that didn’t stop me from spreading the amazing news. Heck no. I’d tell anyone with two ears and a frontal lobe about my amazing miracle cure, so fervent was my belief.

 

In fact, I’ve got a clear memory of passing on this water-riffic weirdness to a girl named Rachel, who was a classmate of mine in fourth grade, and whose real name I’m using because I’ve got nothing embarrassing to share, for once – except maybe her habit of singing off-key to New Kids on the Block. (Whoops. Sorry Rachel.) In a display of skepticism that was impressive for a 10-year-old, Rachel didn’t believe in my trick at first; to get her to try it took some skillful coercion on my part, by which I mean I gave her my little cardboard container of chocolate milk. Between that and an especially aggravating hiccuping fit, she was persuaded to give it a go, pouring herself a glass of water from the faucet in the back of the classroom. She swallowed it down with a grade schooler’s end-of-the-world desperation, which was somehow rendered more poignant by the fact that she was wearing pigtails and a Power Rangers T-shirt. 

 

And what do you know? Her hiccups stopped. At that point, I ceased to be Jeff Lagasse, dorky fourth-grader, and became Jeff the Golden God, hiccup-slayer, purveyor of magic and wisdom. I treasured the reverent look with which she favored me, because to that point, the only respectful glance I’d been able to score from girls was due to my ability to fit half a bag of Cheetos in my mouth.

 

Hic.

 

Naturally, my faith in the water method deepened. I pictured the ripple effect this encounter would produce: Rachel would tell her friends, and they’d tell their friends, and in a matter of months my cure would sweep the nation, becoming the biggest phenomenon this side of neon windpants. I’d be famous! Television appearances, magazine interviews! The cover of Rolling Stone!

 

It took adulthood for me to realize that if the water method was indeed a legitimate cure, it would have been discovered by now, and there’d be no such thing as hiccups. The trick works for me, and did for Rachel, but that can easily be chalked up to the lottery of body chemistry and physiology. To this day, everybody’s got their own unique remedy – some of them downright ludicrous, requiring the banishment of anything resembling dignity. I’m talking tongues sticking out, weird throat-clicking, people standing on their heads. Line up 20 people who are trying to conquer this plague, and you’ll see 20 different reasons to call the men in white coats. It’d be the most pathetic display since Pauly Shore’s performance in “Biodome.”

 

All that aside, I think I’m good. It’s been a healthy chunk of time since the last hiccup, and I’ve got that easy-breathing, out-of-the-woods feeling. But just in case, I think I’ll keep some water handy. Because you never know when –

 

Hic.

 

Ah, crud. Here we go again.