I Just Want to Say: Gargling Salt Water

They just opened an amazing store across the street from my apartment. This is the kind of store you can go to every single day, and walk out of with a sizeable bag, feeling like you just bought something you absolutely need and could not have gone another day without. The store they opened across the street from my apartment is a brand-new, gorgeous (that's not an overstatement) Duane Reade. This Duane Reade has a smoothie bar and a nail salon in it. It has all the perks of a normal Duane Reade, mixed with all the glamor of the marble-lobbied Trump Building which houses it. Oh, and did I mention it's open 24 hours! How amazing! This new addition to my block is one of the (slowly amassing) reasons I will be sad to leave my 'hood come fall. Sidenote: when I was young(er) and living on Long Island, the radio stations my parents listened to would always play Duane Reade commercials, with that catchy little slogan: "Everywhere you go! Duane Reade!" I had never seen a Duane Reade in my life, so I (naturally) wondered where these people were going that they saw Duane Reades everywhere. I could not understand why a radio station that broadcast to the middle of Long Island would advertise that a place is everywhere you go, when it was actually nowhere I went and really served me no purpose for the first 24 years of my life. I thought that jingle would do better on Long Island for the Gap or Dunkin' Donuts or Wendys, or, in the later years, even Starbucks. But then I moved to the city and saw that Duane Reades are basically NYC-centric competition for CVS and Rite Aid. I never really had a preference among the three of them, but now that I live across the street from my very own 24-hour luxury Duane Reade, I don't think I'll be stepping foot inside a CVS anytime soon. It's the first thing I see when I step outside my door in the morning, and it's the last thing I see before entering the revolving door into my building at the end of the day. Now it really is "everywhere I go. (Duane Reade!)"

I recently read a book by Nora Ephron entitled, "I Remember Nothing." Small Asian Friend and Lady Friend both could tell you that this is an appropriate name for a book I would be reading. (Actually, they would tell you it's more appropriately the name of a book I should have written, since it describes me well.) While the book didn't make me "laugh out loud" in the same way Tina Fey's did, it made me smile on the subway a whole lot, and I found many of her self-announced quirks endearing (likely because I find I have many of those same quirks) and enjoyable to read about. I'm going to share a detail about one story in particular that made me smile on the subway (which probably made those around me on the subway somewhat uncomfortable). Nora talks in one chapter about chicken soup. The chapter's title is "I Just Want to Say: Chicken Soup." She names a few of her chapters in that manner, beginning with "I Just Want to Say:..." I like it a lot. Anyway, her chapter on chicken soup is one short paragraph long and talks about how she always has chicken soup when she feels a cold coming on and then inevitably gets the cold anyway. So, she questions, is it the chicken soup that causes the cold? I have often wondered the same thing about that old home remedy of gargling salt water when your throat begins to hurt. When I was a child, I got strep throat once or twice a year, and whenever I felt the beginnings of it, Pops would tell me to go gargle with salt water. I always did (the obedient child that I was), and I still always got strep throat. I decided to refuse to gargle for most of my older teenage years and throughout college because I realized I knew better than to listen to the parents and doctors who were obviously getting kickbacks from the salt industry. Last Friday, I felt the beginnings of a sore throat. Lady Friend and Pops both told me to gargle warm salt water to make it feel better. Outnumbered, I figured, fine, I'll gargle the damn salt water. Today I went to the doctor. I have strep throat. Nora Ephron and I clearly have more in common than our ability to forget things. That's all I'm saying.