Thursday, March 19, 2009

Echinacea

It's the oddest thing, really.  Every time I take echinacea, I get sick.  I have this bottle of echinacea that is several years old.  I know, not the best.  But I bought it back before law school when I was teaching taekwondo and living with my parents.  And I started taking it back then on the advice of a co-worker.  See, working with kids, kids who weren't mine, made me sick all the time.  They showed up from various corners of the community covered in snot, both theirs and their classmates, and then rubbed that snot all over themselves and over me.  And teaching taekwondo to kids is a very hands-on job.  Kids just aren't going to figure out how to do a proper roundhouse kick without hands on legs showing them how to do it.  And giving a little support.  And the kids never came in with their belts tied properly, so you had to stand in front of them and tie it.  And then, of course, kids would sneeze in your face. 

So, the echinacea, b/c I was told, guaranteed, that it would work.  And yet, whenever I took it, I got sick.  So I stopped taking it.  It was hard to be sure if the echinacea was making me sick, or if I was just getting sick because of all the germs, but I stopped taking it, just to be safe. 

And here I am, four, five years later, with that same bottle of echinacea.  Not one to throw things out, I decided to finish the bottle.  And yet, yesterday, the day after I took the echinacea, I was sick.  Sick as a dog with an unidentifiable illness.  Part cold, part food-poisoning.  But all sick. 

I threw that fucking bottle of echinacea in the trash.  And may I never use that word on this blog again because i've used it like 1000 times already.  Damn that stuff to hell.