[ZeldaQueen]

A few summers ago, my neighbor hired routinely as a babysitter for her young daughter and son. Things mostly went well, but there was one evening when things were a bit rocky.

The daughter had some sinus problems which meant that she was to be given a pill every night at bed. This was no problem. But that night, she apparently had a head cold and her mother told me that when I put the kids to bed, I was to give her a dose of medicine for her stuffy nose.

So, come bed time I get the kids to change their clothes, brush their teeth, etc. Then, I pour the dose of medicine and ask the girl to drink it. She goes nuts and starts sobbing that she doesn't want to take the medicine. I didn't get it myself. It wasn't like it was that nasty tasting (grape flavored, it was pretty much the only medicine I actually liked as a child). I try to get her to take it, her brother tries to convince her, nothing works. I decide to try to calm her down first, so I tell her it's alright, just get into bed. My plan was loosely to wait until she was in bed and tired and then get her to drink the medicine by pretending it was water or something. But at about the time she was in bed, her parents came home. I met them at the door and told them I was sorry but the girl wouldn't take the medicine. The mother told me not to worry, if she didn't want to take the medicine, she didn't have to.

This confused me a bit because in my life, I always figured that medicine was assigned to you for medical reasons and therefore if you wanted to stay healthy you just take it no matter how bad it tasted. In any case, I felt rather sorry for my own mom, as I still have memories of her holding me down to take Robitussin whenever I was sick as a child.