Children’s Advil is tasty; Cherry Tootsie-Pops taste like medicine

My older daughter, Charlie, is quite finicky about her medicine and the way it tastes. Ever since she was a baby, the family rule was the grown-up administering the medicine had to taste it first to see how awful it was before giving it to our daughter. Let me tell you, lots of children’s liquid suspension medicine tastes like rat poison. (If rat poison doesn’t taste like this, it ought to, because it’d sure kill a rat.)

This morning, my daughter had woken up with a temperature and had vomited a little, but was fine for most of the day. However, but at bedtime after her bath she felt a bit warm, so I gave my daughter some Children’s Advil before bed. She took a look at the cup and saw it was purple (which usually means grape flavored, which she likes) and said, “I think I’ve had this before and I think I like it.” She took a small sip, nodded approvingly, and downed the rest. Like testing a fine wine, she’s quite the connoisseur. I have to agree with her, those flavor scientists at Advil got the formula right: all children’s liquid suspension medicine ought to taste like this stuff.

My younger daughter, Suzie, on the other hand, is absolutely indiscriminate about the taste of medicine. Hell, she asks for the stuff like it’s candy and we have to keep reminding her that, “If you take medicine when you’re not sick, it won’t work as well when you really are sick.” Tonight, the kids had a bit of candy for dessert after supper, and Suzie ended up with a “cherry” flavored Tootsie-Pop. I put “cherry” in scare quotes because that death-on-a-stick doesn’t taste like any cherry I’ve ever tasted. I knew I was right when Suzie, after taking a few licks of the thing, pulls it out of her mouth and says, “Daddy, this tastes like medicine!” Of course, she went on licking the thing some more, but right away I knew that she’d gotten a “cherry” flavored candy. She quickly gave up trying to eat the thing (smart girl!) and went on to the Valentine’s Day red, pink and white M&M’s she had in front of her. Luckily, those things actually taste like chocolate. :-)