FUN THAT'S SICKENING

You know you've done it. We all have. Eaten too much and gotten sick.

But the best sick is the sweet sick where too much cotton candy, too much fudge, too much taffy causes that illness. Which may have gotten your mom to reach for the pink stuff when you were little.

Did you know that in some people, Pepto Bismal causes their tongues to turn black? Yep. I once had a high school student who panicked when she saw her black tongue. She displayed it to me who put her worries at ease. How'd I know? Well, we have some weird allergies in our family.

Besides my wife's allergy to iodine and shellfish. When I was a frosh in high school and was freed from the cafeteria restraints that my parents put on me first semester, I ate at little snack shops (I don't know what they were called: the only time they were opened were during school hours) around the campus. After my burger and fries, maybe a pork tenderloin instead of the burger but always the fries, I'd top off the meal with a pack of cherry Charms. I could eat them in some classes after lunch and sure enough, I'd polish off a full pack before school was out.

Until one day when my eyelids started to swell, almost to the point of swollen shut. It was determined that I had a wild cherry allergy. There are still some artificial stuff that causes me problems including too many cake iced cookies.

Both our children are allergic to blue dye. Our daughter's has gotten worse as she's grown older; our son's better. Blue dye--as in blue jeans, as in blue clothes of any kind,as in blue paper. And when she comes into contact with it, her eyes don't swell, but her hands itch like crazy, and it's time to find some benedryl.

Those are not the fun kinda ways to get sick. But an overload of ice cream on a hot, hot day, or way too many hot dogs at a ball game. Now you're talking about stomach sick fun.