Last week, I spent several days snowboarding at Whistler-Blackcomb in British Columbia, Canada. Despite the absolutely horrendous conditions (they hadn’t had fresh snow in weeks and didn’t get any while we were there), I had a good time. But this isn’t a post about Whistler; no, that won’t happen for a while (if ever). This is a post about Halls cough drops.

While I was at Whistler, I picked up some sort of illness that brought extreme lethargy and a nasty cough. After returning to Minnesota (which took a day longer than expected; once again, a different story), I decided to heed one of the countless messages from advertising and “enter the Halls of medicine.” My goal was relief from the pain of the cough. A slightly more honorable sub-goal was to spare my cube neighbors the periodic sound of respiratory agony.

I made my way to the local Walgreens and plunked down $2 for a bag of 30. I chose “Lemon Honey” flavor, not because I have a penchant for lemons and honey but because I was feeling indifferent and the bag was convenient.

A couple minutes later, I rolled into my office and popped one of the lozenges into my mouth. It turns out that menthol is one of the active ingredients, and boy, could I taste it. In fact, I’m not sure why they bothered with the lemon honey flavor at all; the minty taste of the menthol was absolutely dominant. It wasn’t even a good taste, but I tolerated it in the hope that my cough would abate.

After sucking on the cough drop until it dissinigrated, I expected that I would be cough-free for at least a little while. No such luck. The drop was gone, my coughs remained, and that horrid menthol-lemon-honey taste lingered on my palate.

Maybe my coughs would have eventually been suppressed if I had kept consuming more of the lozenges. Maybe, but I wasn’t going to find out. The taste was simply too revolting.

The next morning, I got up, took a shower, and made breakfast as usual. However, I noticed that my orange juice didn’t taste right. The taste was familiar… what was it? Oh no — I knew what it was. It was the taste of those cough drops! I brushed my teeth, gargled water, and went to work. The taste was still there! For the record, so was my cough. For the complete record, so was my backache. For the REALLY complete record, so wasn’t Moss with the Vikings.

I wasn’t sure what to do. For a brief while, I contemplated eating another Halls drop, just in case a new drop would somehow suppress the taste of the old one. Fortunately, I relized the logical fallacy and saved myself the amplified agony.

Days have gone by with no relief. Whenever I eat or drink anything, and often while I’m simply sitting, I taste that awful flavor in my mouth. It doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t get better. There are no instructions on the label for removing the hideous aftertaste; I checked. All I can do is wait for time to run its course. I hope it’s a fast runner.