When I was a kid, my Aunt Linna always would say to me, “You’re a Pill.” I never understood what she was saying. Of course, I never understood why she would spend hours laboring over a puzzle either whenever she visited our house.
But as we get older, more and more of us are becoming pills. Pills for indigestion, pills to calm us down, pills to reduce the pain… even pills to keep us alive a couple days longer.
Perhaps my aunt was right. I know some people who are popping more pills now than they did in Haight Ashbury. The main difference is they’re all legal now. We used to call them uppers and downers, but now they have fancy names and appear in television commercials that list more side effects than you should be able to fit into a 30 second commercial. I particularly like the ones that say, “Could cause unexpected death.”
Who in the hell expects death? Aren’t all deaths kind of unexpected. You could be lying in your hospital room, breathing in your last breaths and you still don’t know which breath will be the last one. It’s kind of unexpected. Breath. Breath. Death.
However, realizing that we’re all getting older made me think about how they could improve pills for us eventual geriatrics. If you’ve ever taken a lot of pills, you know that they can all look the same. Unless you saw what bottle they came out of, you couldn’t tell a prescription pill from an ordinary aspirin.
I have a much simpler idea. Make the pills in the shapes that relate to what they are or do. For example, a pill for your heart should be heart shaped. There in the pile of pills is a little pink heart, and you know what it does. A liver pill should be liver shaped and be a pinkish brown, unless you have advanced liver stage, then the pills you’d take would be a brownish black and a little smaller and much harder. This would have a secondary benefit of letting you know that your days are numbered, unless, of course you get a new liver and go back to the pinkish brown prescription.
This could work for non-prescription pills too, of course. An antacid could look like your stomach, a sleeping pill would be in the shape of a Z, aspirin would be head shaped.
Think of it as Lucky Charms cereal for old folks. Instead of having your marshmallow moons, green clovers and orange stars, you could sidle up to the old kitchen table and marvel at your mix of pills. A red heart, a pink stomach and maroon kidney. O.K., so they don’t sound as appetizing. But they serve a far more important role in your health than a bunch of marshmallows that have been in a box for a year or more.
I for one would welcome this new coding system. It would make life so much easier. Think about how handy this would be if you come home from a party late at night and you don’t want to disturb your bedmate by turning on the light in the bathroom. Instead of fumbling around and guessing, you could just feel the shape and know that you have the right pill. Instead of accidentally taking your wife’s birth control pill (baby shaped) you take the one that is a Z. Even a guy who’s on his lips can tell the difference between the two pills.
This could come in handy with vitamins, too. Omega 3’s could look like a salmon. Vitamin C would be an orange or a lime, Vitamin D, a cow and Vitamin A could be a carrot.
This could be a boon to the pill industry. Suddenly, you could differentiate your pills from the others. For example, they could create a line of heart-shaped pills like the Conversation Hearts. You know, those little candies with the sayings on them. The writing could say, “Take Once a Day” for those with a fairly healthy heart. Or if you’re late stage, it can be the phone number of a local funeral home. Think of the advertising potential. Another manufacturer could make a really realistic looking heart pill that was like the Bubbaloo Gum in the 1970s. You’d bite into the pill and Surprise! — a liquid cherry flavored center.
While I certainly don’t need Viagra (just ask around), I think it should look like a penis. The different dosages could be different sizes. Or for extra strength Viagra they could add on the balls. I don’t think I’d like this pill with a liquid center, however.
As you can see, purpose shaped pills could be a wonderful thing for us Baby Boomers who are having a harder time seeing without our glasses. Instead of worrying that we grabbed the wrong bottle and overdosed on pain pills, we would know that the hammer shaped pill (remember those hammers pounding in Anacin commercials?) will relieve our aches. In fact, you could revitalize a lot of the brands we loved in the 60s and 70s by bringing them out in new fun shapes. Pepto Bismol pills could be pink stomachs, Ex Lax could be… well, you get the idea.
I for one applaud this idea. And no, it’s not because it’s my idea. This is offered purely as a public service, unless someone decides to take me up on it, then they should be sending me oodles of money.
Personally, I look forward to purpose shaped pills. I don’t take many these days, thankfully. As most of you know, I went cold turkey off Lexapro a year ago. But it does make me wonder what Lexapro would look like. What is the shape of a “crazy pill?” The thought intrigues me…
Out on the Treasure Coast, about to take my Flintstones vitamins, which has always seemed a little cannibalistic to me,
– Robb