Puffs Plus Blows

For some people it’s chicken soup, for me it’s Vicks® VapoRub®. I don’t remember getting any particular healing food when we had colds. I remember lying in bed with Vicks® VapoRub® on my chest – the soothing vapors rising up to my nose as I read selections from our box of Little Golden Books®. So comforting, and yet not. There was something irritating too… a fly in the ointment, so to speak.

My mother would take a scratchy old washcloth and safety pin it to my PJs. Or sometimes she would stuff a few cheap, scratchy Kleenex® facial tissues in there. The point was to keep the VapoRub® from staining my PJs but the items used seriously detracted from the overall sensory pleasures of the VapoRub®.

You know what I like? I like Doritos®, or one of many other brands of tortilla chips. I like the plain ones. Sometimes I spread them on a plate, put shredded cheese on top and microwave them to make delicious nachos. Do I like nacho flavored Doritos®? I do not. Cheese powder is fine for Cheetos® brand cheese doodles. Doodles by themselves have no flavor; they are a vehicle for the powdered imitation cheese flavored product. I have nothing against powdered imitation cheese flavored product; nothing is more American than that. Nevertheless, I don’t like the powdered imitation cheese flavored product on my tasty Doritos®; it muddles the salty chip taste and ruins the texture. And I would never confuse the combined product with actual nachos.

My sister just told me that she likes Puffs Plus® with the scent of Vicks®, which are facial tissues infused with lotion and, obviously, the scent of Vicks® VapoRub®. The “scent” of Vicks® is like imitation cheese flavored product. It does not benefit the tissue. If I want cheese on a chip, I want cheese on a chip. If I want lotion on my nose or I want Vicks rubbed into my chest so the scent wafts up my nostrils, that’s what I want. I don’t want an imitation flavored tissue.

It’s probably just mental. I assume if Puffs Plus® with the scent of Vicks® had existed years ago, my mother would have just stuffed those in my PJs and told me to breathe deep. The up side is that they wouldn’t have been as scratchy.