Читать книгу My Ten Years in a Quandary - Robert C Benchley - Страница 13

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Anyone will be glad to admit that he knows nothing about beagling, or the Chinese stock market, or ballistics, but there is not a man or woman alive who does not claim to know how to cure hiccoughs. The funny thing is that the hiccoughs are never cured until they get darned good and ready.

The most modest and unassuming man in the world becomes an arrogant know-it-all in the presence of hiccoughs—in somebody else.

"Don't be silly," he says, patronizingly. "Just put your head under your arm, hold a glass of water against the back of your neck, and count to five hundred by fives without taking a breath. It never fails."

* * * * *

Then, when it has failed, he blames you. "It's absolutely sure-fire if you only follow my directions," he says. He also implies darkly that what is ailing you is not just merely hiccoughs. "My method can't be expected to cure drunkenness, you know," he says.

To date, I have been advised to perform the following feats to cure hiccoughs:

Bend the body backward until the head touches the floor, and whistle in reverse.

Place the head in a pail of water and inhale twelve times deeply.

Drink a glass of milk from the right hand with the right arm twisted around the neck until the milk enters the mouth from the left side.

Hop, with the feet together, up and down a flight of steps ten times, screaming loudly at each hop.

Roll down a long, inclined lawn, snatching a mouthful of grass up each time the face is downward.

I have tried them all, with resultant torn ligaments, incipient drowning, lockjaw and arsenic poisoning, but, each time, at the finish of the act, and a few seconds of waiting while my mentor says, triumphantly: "See! What did I tell you?" that one, big hiccough always breaks the tension, indicating that the whole performance has been a ghastly flop.

* * * * *

My latest fiasco came as the result of reading the prescription of a Boston doctor, and almost resulted in my being put away as an irresponsible person. "All that the sufferer has to do," wrote the doctor, "is to blow up an ordinary paper bag, as if to explode it and then hold it over the mouth and nose tightly, breathing in and out of the bag instead of in and out of the open air."

This, according to the doctor, creates an excess of carbon monoxide gas in the bag, which is breathed over and over again, acting on a nervous center of the brain and curing the hiccoughs.

Being alone in the room at the time, I blew the bag up and held in tightly over my face, including not only my mouth and nose, but my eyes as well, like a gas-mask. I subjected myself to this treatment for possibly three minutes, walking around the room at the same time to keep from getting bored.

* * * * *

When I removed the bag I found myself the object of the silent but terrified scrutiny of my wife, who had entered the room without my knowing it, and who had already motioned for corroborating witnesses from the next room, two of whom were standing in the doorway, transfixed.

My explanation that I was curing hiccoughs did not go very big, as what I had obviously been doing was walking around the room alone with a paper bag over my head. This is not a good sign.

Incidentally, I still have my hiccoughs.