A Little Personal Body … er … Auto Care Never Hurt

NOTE: I wrote a mediocre version of this in my weekly newspaper humor column in 1997. I’ve updated the mediocrity for 2023 because fuck that newspaper.

I was sick. Guh. Not just sick. The kind of sick where you say, “I’m sick. Guh.”

The cocktail of cough syrup, Benadryl and a muscle relaxer kept me drifting in and out of sleep … or feudal Japan … I couldn’t tell the two apart.

The television was on, but only to keep me from panicking that I was going def. It was that kind of sick where you could drain fluid from your ear canals with a horse syringe.

The only thing I could really hear were the obnoxiously louder-than-the-show television commercials.

“Protect your engine against viscosity and thermal breakdown!”

My stupor convinced me the voice was my doctor. My nose, throat and lungs was my engine. And I needed motor oil to feel better.

Freezing cold, but sweating a small mountain brook, I new I was suffering from thermal breakdown. But I had no idea what viscosity was.

The dictionary didn’t help. “Viscosity” is a sucker definition, meaning it says something like “having or pertaining to anything viscous.” Then you look up “viscous” and it says “see viscose.” The definition of…