It’s that time of year again: slush falls from the sky and you find yourself trudging in circles through the wintry mix, hoping someone will be handing out free hot chocolate as you avoid your roommate, who’s spent the past few days making hacking sounds that sound like a chain-smoking squirrel. That’s right, it’s cold season.
We certainly hope your efforts will pay off and you’ll avoid falling prey to this season’s bought of sniffles and scratchy throats. But more likely than not, your will is going to break and you’ll return to your room to sleep. The next morning, you too have succumbed to the common cold. You drink some tea and chicken soup, eat six grapefruits, and slowly make your way through a bag of honey-lemon throat lozenges. Nothing seems to work, so you turn to the Internet. Soon you’re chopping red onions, rubbing ginger on your belly, and wrapping dirty socks around your wrists. After several attempts at tying your nail clippings to a live eel (the eel carries away the sickness!), you’re about ready to give up.
But don’t despair! Those old wive’s tales lost their sparkle long ago; make way for an exciting innovation in “medical science”: new wive’s tales! The following remedies are compiled from the most potent of modern folk wisdom, and are sure to make some sort of impact on your ailments:
- Sore throat: Rub a copious dollop of hair conditioner on the skin of the throat. Products with shea butter, silk proteins, and/or almond oil are especially effective due to their infusing properties. You also can’t go wrong with anything called “Sweet Orange and Bergamot.”
- Stomachache: Lie on your back for two hours with a stack of three to four biology textbooks on your belly. Economics or American History textbooks won’t work—they lack chapters on the digestive system.
- Headache: Massage your temples with pesto sauce while listening to whale songs. Do this for fifteen minutes, followed by five minutes of savasana. Repeat seventeen times.
- Runny nose: Take shots of hot sauce. If that’s too extreme for you, try… no, wait, there’s nothing else. If you can’t handle the heat, there’s no hope for you. Get cracking on your will.
- Skinned knee (not a traditional symptom of common cold, but you never know with these new virulent strains): Make your favorite flavor of instant oatmeal and rub gently in the wound. My preference is apple cinnamon, but any flavor will do as long as it includes partially hydrogenated soybean oil.
- Chest pain: Fill a bathtub with marshmallows and gummy bears in a ratio of 3:1. No, silly, don’t get in it. The healing power is all in the journey.
- General fogginess: For at least twenty-four hours, everything you ingest must begin with the letter R to get your systems back to a reliably regular routine. Break out those raisins that have been sitting in your pantry since that one time you made ants-on-a-log. It’s time to get creative.
- Pure, blind rage: This is not an ailment; this is an asset! Take advantage of it while it lasts by kicking down a few doors and solving climate change.
- Chills: Wearing nothing but your bathing suit and ski mask, get yourself into a sleeping bag. Eat ridiculous amounts of cinnamon candy while you watch one of the following movies: “Catching Fire,” “The Heat,” or “Frozen” (that last one for some sweet reverse psychology, obviously).
- Dizziness: Sit in a cross-legged position on top of a picnic table while a friend pours molasses over your head to the tune of “Happy Birthday.” The sugar molecules respond to the dessert motifs evoked in the song to re-align your energy with Earth’s magnetic field.
Hope these help! For more remedies like these, call 1-800-MODERNLEECH.
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