Letter From America: It All Comes Back To Me Now!
"They told me was that when I reached my dotage, and there is evidence to suggest I am anchored at that mooring, then the memories of my childhood years would come flooding back as clear as the day they were printed on my tiny mind. They haven’t and I am losing faith that they ever will,'' writes Ronnie Bray.
It doesn’t, but they told me it would, but it hasn’t, and it probably won’t. You could say I have lost faith in conventional wisdom. I’m talking about memory of the old times. I am not referring to times antediluvian, pre-Roman Britain, or the era of the Industrial Revolution. How could I? Contrary to what some of my children think I was not born then.
They told me was that when I reached my dotage, and there is evidence to suggest I am anchored at that mooring, then the memories of my childhood years would come flooding back as clear as the day they were printed on my tiny mind. They haven’t and I am losing faith that they ever will. The best I can say for the sage advice on the matter is that it kept me quiet and uncomplaining for a long time. That time is past and my early years are as fog-bound as ever.
What brought this promise and its failure to appear to mind was hearing or reading something earlier today, I forget which it was and also what it was, but it was something that reminded me of the pharmaceutical miracle that took place when M&Bs hit the headlines. My spell-checker wanted me to replace M&Bs with M&Ms, which goes to show how far the world has come since I first heard about M&Bs. Remembering M&Bs also reminded me of Number Nines, of which more later.
M&Bs were tablets of a synthetic drug, known as M and Bs, after the pharmaceutical company, ‘May and Baker,’ who developed the drug that was effective against pneumonia. Although the drug was developed in the 1930s I didn’t hear about them until the 1940s because people didn’t talk about such things to babies, and I was a baby until 1940 when I turned five and was subsequently introduced to all kinds of interesting adult information.
It would be in the later 1940s when, through Schoolboy University, I became aware of a military term that was always greeted with hoots of laughter by my fellow alumni. This was a military medicinal compound known as Number Nine. The British Army's Number Nine was a high-powered laxative pill, also referred to as a ‘depth charge.’ It was the standard prescription doled out by questionably qualified medical officers, and by unquestionably unqualified medical orderlies, indiscriminately and with malice aforethought to minor soldiers reporting sick with vague somatic symptoms, particularly to those classified as Medicine and Duty, or consigned to the even more vague category of Not Yet Diagnosed. It was a medical form of amusement similar to pulling the wings off flies.
The major function of the Number Nine was to initiate convulsions in the small and large intestines of such ferocity that they were evacuated with the quickness of a cobra strike, usually before the victim, er, make that the patient, had managed to take up residency in a place suited for what inexorably followed. The result of such treatment was invariably a nett loss of five pounds, instantaneous dehydration, fatigue, ennui, and, in certain cases, early death. These days of medical advancement the treatment remains only as the faded ghost behind the Bingo caller’s cry, "Doctor’s orders, number nine!"
What I have never found in my medical ramblings has been a pill to bring about the sparkling remembrance of things past with the vividity that I have been promised. I do recall a drug called Cyclospasmol that was used to treat memory loss, but the US Food and Drug agency has banned its sale in the United States because it is a danger to life and limb. It is, however, available from India at an attractive price. The drawbacks are that it has been known to induce hot flushes, gastro-intestinal upsets, nausea, paræsthesia, tachycardia, sweating, dizziness, and headache.
Although I would love to have a shot at the bright recall of my diminutive years, some of which years I have absolutely no memory at all, I have to weigh that against spending my lost childhood whilst suffering from the insults of age as a concomitant of opening the steel trap wherein my secret life languishes unsung. After giving that serious consideration, I have opted for not remembering the forgotten years, but will keep my reasonable health and make up everything I cannot remember. After all, it is my word against theirs, and there’s not too many of ‘them’ left to disagree!
© 2011 – Ronnie Bray
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Ronnie's Yorkshire Folk Tales page:
http://yorkshiretales.com/
Listen to some of Ronnie Famous Yorkshire Tales Online at:
http://www.wix.com/jorvik/yorkshiretales
Read some of Ronnie's Religious and Spiritual writings at:
http://www.scribd.com/Mormon-Quill
Historical Novel In Preparation:
"Luddite Spring: The Huddersfield Luddite Uprising of 1811 - 1812
