Gotcha!!

Not long ago, I heard about this 114 year old woman who let my neighbor in on the real fountain of youth secret. She said everyone out chasing diets and new exercise programs were crazy as outhouse rats.

The secret was simply to pour up one eighth of a cup of apple cider vinegar and drink it each day. I wasn’t going to consider taking a bath in the stuff or even drink a cup full twice a day but hey, how awful could one eighth of a cup be?

So I rustled around in the cabinet until I found the apple cider vinegar. I should have realized that it was amongst the things I brought with me when we moved into this house…36 years ago. It had a price sticker of nineteen cents on it and use by label that had had faded so badly I couldn’t even read it.

But vinegar is vinegar. Once the apple juice turns to vinegar it’s finished with the process and it stays vinegar forever, amen.

I got out my eighth cup measure and poured it full to the brim, carefully transferred that to a jelly glass and it didn’t look like so much at all. Then I filled a glass with crushed ice and water to chase it with, just like the woman said she did after drinking it each day.

It didn’t smell bad enough to set off my gag reflex so that was a step in the right direction. I grabbed the vinegar in one hand and the ice water in the other and threw back that vinegar like an old cowgirl drinking moonshine on a Saturday afternoon western.

Surprise! Surprise! I didn’t even need the ice water. It had a faint kick but there was nothing to it. If this was a better way than running ten miles a day and giving up chocolate then bring on the vinegar.

The next day Mr. B was on the way to the grocery store and asked if I needed anything. Yes, sir, I needed a half gallon of apple cider vinegar. I was going to cheat the undertaker out of a funeral for many, many years while I ate all the bacon I wanted.

That night I poured up my dosage and threw it back in a dramatic gesture. I had not even gone to the bother of making a glass of ice water. And in that moment I found out that there is such a thing as “old” vinegar.

My hair stood straight up on end. I shivered to the end of my toenails. I danced a full-fledged rain dance in my living room floor on knees that begged me to cease and desist. I tried to breathe buy my lungs were on strike. My stomach drew up so tight I couldn’t have gotten a chocolate kiss inside it.

I considered dialing 911 but my hands were trembling so badly I couldn’t punch the buttons. Any minute I was going to fall to the floor and Mr. B would find me graveyard dead when he came to see what the commotion was all about. I could picture him engraving on my tombstone, “Here lies the woman who thought she was meaner than vinegar!”

When I finally got control of my senses I had a whole new respect for vinegar and for that woman who drank it every day. If I ever have the privilege of meeting that lady I’m going to shake her hand and do my level best to stay on her good side. It’s no wonder she’s lived to be that old. There is not a germ out there that would cross a woman who could drink that every day.

Old age is even afraid of her. It probably had a meeting with her back at the 100 mark and said, “Darlin’ when you decide to be old, you just let me know. Until then I’m not messin’ with you.”

I’m convinced that anyone who could take that dose every twenty four hours could arm wrestle a constipated cougar with one arm tied behind her back…and win!!

Exercise and dieting do not look so bad after all!