I don’t have a problem taking pills. Oh, occasionally, I’ll pop a capsule in my mouth and go to get a drink and get sidelined and have an issue with the outside of the capsule dissolving in my mouth and the powder inside tasting really bad. (Please don’t let this happen to you with green tea supplements; it took me forever to get the overwhelming taste off my tongue.) For the most part, though, pill taking is not something I think about.

Vitamin C tablets got me doing so, however. These tablets are 500 mg and are about as big as a dime in circumference and – measuring from bulge to bulge on each side – close to a third of an inch thick. It was a big bottle and a big letter C on the bottle but I had no idea they were huge.

I know it now. When I first looked at one, I felt a bit of apprehension but tossed it in my mouth and started drinking water. That tablet was basically riding the waves of the incoming attempted swallows. Oh, the water went down but the tablet would bounce back and eventually I was sloshing water out of my mouth and wondering if I was going to choke. Obviously, it worked out. But it was not a one time deal; it has become a challenge. Fortunately for me, I have learned a method, but I am not so certain of this method and don’t attempt a Vitamin C encounter in front of anyone.

This was the second time I have been confronted with a big, dry pill. The first time was when I was five and had the chickenpox. I definitely remember being bundled up on the sofa with a little bed tray over my lap that held some breakfast and the morning pill that was a cube like one of a pair of dice. This memory does not deal with my first time taking the medicine; I think I blocked that out of my mind. This was the time I decided to hide it under the saucer on my tray. My mother eventually picked up the tray and, yes, not too long later she returned to grin and ask, “Did you hide that pill?” There’s not too much a five year old can do when the jig is  up – I confessed. And I don’t remember what happened then. Maybe, just maybe, she cut it up.

Another thing I remember from my kindergarten year was coming home in the afternoon and deciding I would try out the idea of entertaining myself. For a few hours, I played “store” and kept to myself. I heard my mother say to my father when he came home that I had played all afternoon without bothering her. And, although I can’t remember the sophistication of my vocabulary at the time, I very definitely remember the essence of my thought: “Well, don’t count on it happening again, lady, because it was incredibly boring.”

Mother was undoubtedly happy when first grade came and I went to all day school.