I was listening to Clive Bull at work a few nights ago, and he was talking about something called “tiger bread.” Apparently it’s a loaf of bread that’s been smeared with olive oil (or something) before baking, which creates a design on top of the loaf that sorta resembles a tiger’s coat.
Never heard of it, but that’s not really the point of this quickie update… One of his callers said she rarely eats bread, because it gives her the hiccups. Bread!
The weird thing: Toney suffers under the exact same curious curse. Perhaps there’s one on every continent? I don’t know. But Toney can’t take a bite of a dinner roll, slice of toast, or piece of white bread, without hiccuping for the next 45 minutes. It’s an amazing thing to behold.
The only time I get the hiccups is when I have one too many beers. But I’m so “accomplished” at this point, one too many exists only as an abstract theory. And there are no foods that trigger ’em, or weather conditions, or colors, or moods.
So I rarely get the hiccups. However, I know how to get rid of them, when I do… My grandfather, on my dad’s side, died in 1974. But even though I was fairly young then, I remember the never-fails hiccup cure he taught me, and have been using it most of my life.
You take nine sips of water, you see, without breathing in between. Nine tiny sips, right after the other. Then, when you’re finished, you just continue breathing normally.
That’s the key: controlling your breathing after all the sipping. Instincts tell you to take in a big lungful of air at the end, but that’ll defeat the purpose. You’ve got to make an effort to just breathe normally, and the hiccups will go away. And I ain’t shittin’ ya, it never fails.
I’ve tried to teach the Secrets how to do this, and Toney too, but they always gasp for air at the end, and proclaim the technique “stupid.” It’s all in the breathing though, and recalibrating the rhythm.
Is there anything that always makes you hiccup? And do you know any never-fails cures? What about hiccupping’s distant cousin, sneezing? I knew a guy who would sneeze in bright sunlight. WTF??
Use the comments link, if you’ve got anything to say about hiccupping or sneezing. And also tiger bread, if you know anything about that weirdness…
And I’ll be back with a full-length update on Monday.
See ya then.