Skip to main content

What's In a Name?

As the Mild Fiancée will tell you, I'm the kind of person who reads labels and follows instructions. She's more likely to go off script when it comes to recipes, but I do as I'm told. I don't know if there's an ironclad defense for this, but it's served me well enough over the years. Well, as it turns out, reading labels can lead to hilarity.

First, let's start with the infamous teaspoon incident. It has become lore in the Mild Fiancée and I's relationship, and I laugh about it every single time. The background for this particular story was that I was sick. I had a pretty nasty cold going, complete with the runny nose and sinus issues that plague me from time to time. The Mild Fiancée had some medicine in the cupboard, so she gave me some in the hopes that it'd help calm my symptoms. And I swear to you, I felt better within minutes. That stuff was magical.

I was impressed by this magical elixir, to say the least. I immediately went about trying to learn everything I could about it, so I could keep some of it on hand myself. To begin with, this elixir was actually something called Bronchial Wellness. I scoured the label to figure out what the active ingredient was, so that I would know what to look for in the future. One small, tiny detail, however, jumped out at me: the recommended dosage was a teaspoon for an adult.

I'm fairly bad at estimating things, but I was fairly sure that the Mild Fiancée had given me more than a teaspoon of the stuff. That led to the following conversation (paraphrased, since it happened a while back):

Me: "Hey, [Mild Fiancée], how much of this Bronchial Wellness did you give me?"
Mild Fiancée: "A tablespoon. Why?"
Me: "Um, the recommended dosage is a teaspoon."
Mild Fiancée: "Meh, they're about the same."
Me: "About the same? A tablespoon is three times as large."
Mild Fiancée: "What? No."
Me: "It is. You gave me triple the dosage."
(after some Googling proves that I wasn't making up that number)
Mild Fiancée: "Well, you feel better. And it's natural stuff anyway."

No wonder I felt better so quickly. I took my entire day's portion in a single shot. Incidentally, that incident is also known as the Triple The Dosage episode. Also, both the Mild Fiancée and I know exactly how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon off the top of our heads.

However, my favorite instance of amusing labels can be summed up with two pictures. These are the vitamins that the Mild Fiancée takes:

With a name like that, you'd figure the directions should be pretty straight forward. The brand is called "One A Day." Maybe you should, you know, take one a day.

Well, here are the directions on the back of the container:

Notice the line at the top. If you can't quite make it out, it specifically says that adults should take two gummies daily. The serving size for their product is also 2 gummies. It's not a typo. So, to be clear, you're supposed to take two of the "one a day" gummies per day.

Have I mentioned I like reading product labels? It can be surprisingly amusing.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New York City Trip (Day 3)

By the third day of the trip, I was tired enough from the previous day's adventures/subway rides that I felt like sleeping in. And sleep in I did. I think I woke up at something like 11:30 or noon. Of course, that meant that a later start to the day, which started the vicious cycle all over again. By the time we rolled into Manhattan, it was about two in the afternoon. I had tentatively set aside Sunday to see something on Broadway, so we headed over to the tkts booth for discount tickets. There were actually various 3PM options, and after mulling our options, we figured it'd be a good idea to catch one of those. We settled on The Toxic Avenger , which was actually an off-Broadway option. However, we hadn't eaten yet, and the show started about 15 minutes after we got our tickets. Enter the food carts. There happened to be one right outside the theater, and the guy charged a little bit of a premium for the convenience. Still, I was hungry, and I had yet to try...
1 comment
Read more

Moment of Truth

I forget where I first heard it (I think it might have been Descartes), but I have long been a fan of the notion that certain things just have a " ring of truth " to them. If you've never heard the idiom before, the basic idea is that some things are super-true. They are not just true, but they are so obviously true, that as soon as you hear them, you recognize the truthiness inherent in them. I usually get excited when I hear one of these, since it means that I am a tiny bit less ignorant from that moment forward. For the first time in memory, though, I experienced the ring of truth. First, let me paint the scene with a little bit of background. I'd made plans to have dinner with my friend, but we'd agreed to play it by ear. The end result was that we ended up settling on a pretty late dinner in a local spot. That worked out just fine, since we weren't shooting for gourmet, we just wanted to grab some food and catch up in the process. So, we headed out to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

All Good Things ...

August 8, 2009. Over twelve years ago, I started blogging with this simple post . I didn't really have a great reason for starting the blog, other than I wanted to try it out. I wanted to try writing and putting it where others could read it. I don't know, it just seemed like a new adventure to try. Along the way, there have been all sorts of posts and all sorts of life events, but through it all, I kept writing. It just became a part of what I do at some point. It wasn't a matter of whether I was going to write a blog post, it was a matter of when. The Mild Wife has described it as a "writing practice," and it was one of the reasons why I kept writing. Honestly, it's good practice, and it gives me an opportunity to hone my craft. I'm no professional author, but we all have to write stuff in our everyday lives. Why not give yourself reps to get better at it? However, I think it's time for that practice to change. My weekly anecdotes sure kept me amused...
Post a Comment
Read more