Thursday, September 28, 2006

The hiccups.... again

I've had the hiccups every morning this week. I wonder if it's a seasonal thing? Like allergies. Maybe every spring and fall, I'll get chronic hiccups for the rest of my life.

The funny thing about hiccups is that scientists aren't exactly sure what causes them, or what their purpose is. Some of the speculated reasons I've encountered over the years of suffering from this apparently genetic disease (how else do you explain that my sister gets them as bad, sometimes worse, as I do?) are:
1. Eating extremely hot or cold foods (I drink a lot of water over the course of the day, and first thing in the morning it's right out of the refrigerator, which could explain my occasional morning hiccups but not my afternoon hiccups)
2. Eating too big of a meal (single hiccups do not count in my opinion. If it's a single hiccup, just call it a burp and be done with it)
3. Drinking too heavily (this is the only time Mr. Honey ever gets the hiccups, darn him!)
4. Hiccups are a way to keep the body from choking on something (WTF??? But I swear on my honor it's a reason I've been given)
5. Neck disalignment (No kidding, my sister's hiccups get better after a visit to her chiropractor)

The conclusion I'm forced to draw is that everyone's diaphragm muscle has a different reason for having spasms. Some people's diaphragm muscles, like mine, simply take a pure enjoyment in causing the curse of the hiccups. These are people whose bodies sometimes have a bigger sense of humor than circus clowns, although I'd be hard pressed to believe all circus clowns actually have a sense of humor. They seem just a little too creepy sometimes to be funny.

And speaking of funny... one day about a year ago, I had a bad case of the hiccups. This kind woman across the hall came darting into my office with a cup of water, said "Do this," and proceeded to bend at the waist and contort herself into the strangest position from which I've ever seen a human drink a glass of water. So I cocked my head at her and said, "Can you show me that again?" And she did! So after I finished snickering (I never said I was a nice person), I pulled my handy little jar of peanut butter from my desk drawer, took a nice big spoonful and ate it whole (the peanut butter, not the spoon), and voila! The hiccups disappeared. Plus I'd gotten a show for the day.

That's a lot better than three years ago, at my old job, when the creepy dude with the 1970's sideburns and mustache and a Napolean complex cornered me in the snack bar while I desperately dug around for sugar (thank God for office coffee pots), since I was out of peanut butter at the time and a teaspoon of sugar works almost as well as peanut butter. Anyway, creepy dude, who just happens to be blessed with more brains than God Himself (and if you don't believe it, just ask creepy dude - he'll tell you so), proceeds to back me into a corner and try to explain to me what causes hiccups, when in actuality all he knew was what hiccups are (muscle spasms). As evidenced by my well-researched list above, the people whose job it is to discover these things, don't even know. So, I started walking back at creepy dude, finally getting close enough to invade his space (Eeeewwwww!) and make him step back (which I was grateful to never have to do again), and informed him that scientists and medical professionals didn't even know what caused the hiccups. And God bless him, the 50-year-old virgin in the office popped up over his cubicle at that point and said, "It's true. They don't. Momma told me so." So I escaped with my sugar while creepy dude and 50-year-old virgin discussed the finer points of what hiccups are vs. what causes them.

And now, since I've been typing about them, they've gone away. Thank you for allowing me to vent my hiccups onto this page this morning. I wish you well, and that you don't catch the hiccups from blogger this morning.

P.S. If you like the peanut butter cure, in my experience peanut butter cups work nearly as well too.

Posted by Honey :: 7:53 AM :: 2 Comments:

Post a Comment

---------------------------------------