I owe ya

Here's another from my columns, this time on home remedies.

Home remedies!

Men have as much knowledge of home remedies as they do of home maladies – nil to none. Yeah, I can’t lie. It’s just not our forte.
Case in point: My father-in-law had a bad reaction to some strenuous work with snowmobiles – his hand swelled up to almost twice its size. How did he think he’d fix it? He thought he’d just wait it out. That’s all. And that’s what man does best. When we’re trying to watch the game or just getting into Guitar Hero, and the woman starts yelling from the kitchen, we’re cool to just let her yell and yell. She’ll give up soon enough. That kind of patience is just ingrained in men; it’s inherent in our genetic makeup. (OK, I made that last part up, but there’s no genetic evidence to prove me wrong … is there?)
And waiting it out is what men do well. If we can sit through a chick flick marathon without crying our eyes out (from boredom), we can wait out anything. It’s when we decide not to wait it out that men start to get a little … nuts.
There are a lot of crazy ideas men have. Remember the old guy Gus from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”? That character was based off Nia Vardalos’s father who was addicted to window cleaner. He really sprayed that stuff on everything! (No, not really). But thinking that Windex will cure anything from psoriasis to paralysis sounds only slightly exaggerated. There have been other bad ideas I’ve heard of – pouring your own urine in your ear to stop ear infections, eating salmon eyes to prevent tooth decay, drinking chicken soup to stop a cold. It seems that if men want to solve something, they’ll brave just about anything (even embarrassment). But mostly men just ignore health issues like they do all of life’s other problems.