Hamlette's Soliloquy

My hair's been kind of dull and flat and dry lately (I have a LOT of hair, btw, for anyone who might read this that doesn't know me personally). So I picked up these little 88-cent packs of Aussie 3-Minute-Miracle stuff from work. They're supposed to add life and lustre to your hair, blah blah blah. So tonight I used it in the shower. Hair's still too wet yet to tell if it helped, but that's not the point.

The point is the horrific mediciney-grape smell the stuff had. As soon as I smelled it, I instantly remembered this traumatic grape-flavored cough syrup my parents forced me to take when I was a kid. Cardec. Ugh! The name still induces shivers of revulsion, and I haven't taken Cardec since I was like 11. My parents actually had to sorta bribe us to take it: they'd give us a swig of soda after we downed a dose. We didn't get to drink much soda ('pop' to you Yankee types) when I was a kid, so that was a pretty big treat. Although it was usually just Mom's Diet Dr. Pepper, which is not the most kid-oriented flavor in existence.

So there I was, 24 years old, standing in my shower in Wisconsin...but suddenly, thanks to that wretched grape smell, I felt like I was 8, standing in the dimly-lit Michigan kitchen, screwing my courage to the sticking point. Readying myself for the nauseating whiff of Cardec. Steeling myself against the terrible grape flavor. I'd grab the little plastic cup, bolt down the Cardec (seriously, I probably looked like I was doing shots of tequila), and then grope blindly (squinching my eyes shut made Cardec taste less egregious) for the red plastic glass that held my chaser of Diet Dr. Pepper.

Unless this 3-Minute-Miracle does truly marvelous things to my hair, I'm never using it again just cuz it makes me remember Cardec. Zeus, I hated that stuff!