A few weeks back I will little piece about my late Mothers home remedies. There were one or two more which I forget to mention and have since recalled. My mother used to have a unique way to fend off germs. Not just some germs but all germs. She did it with what she called an asafetida bag. I wore one for three years from the time I started grade one until I finish grade 3. Mother made these bags by tearing up a small piece of cloth into about 6 inch squares. In the centre of the square she would put a cube of camphor and a clove of garlic. Then she'd gather up the four corners of the cloth, wrap a string around the gather, and tie it to my neck under my heavy drop-seat Stanfield underwear. I tell you, in a hot classroom you could smell young Forbes 50 feet away. As soon at the smell started to weaken Mother would put together another asafetida bag and we'd have a fresh go at those germs. Funny thing about it is this. My mother, when I was a kid, didn't believe in shots. I never had a needle in my arm until I joined the Royal Canadian Navy. All my other friends were inoculated and vaccinated for everything from hangnails to bog spavin, but my brother and I went unprotected except for mothers bags. The miracle of the matter is that while the other kids, protected as they were by the advances of modern medicine, we're dropping like flies with measles, mumps, chickenpox and whooping cough, my brother and I never got a thing. We had to be the healthiest kids in school. Naturally I would like to attribute this to mothers bags. No one should have to suffer as we did without some benefit, but in the quiet turning of my own considered judgment, I can see now why my brother and I never caught all those childhood diseases. Very simply, no diseased kid; in fact no healthy one either would get within 20 feet of us. The asafetida bags were just too much to take. Just one thing more. Those bags gave me a nickname which I carried with me for 25 years. They called me...Stinky.
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