Manopausal Medicine

Every man's medicine cabinet is littered with out-of-date prescriptions and has-been pills.  But as the older male stretches into manopause he discovers that his assortment is little more than a witness to a by-gone era.  He no longer needs Brylcreme, for example, and he wonders who did.

Gone also is the need for such illustrious wonder-working potions as the multi-vitamin . . . at his age, and with his now-limited diet, he should be able to get 100% of the recommended daily allowance from a single banana.  In addition, he no longer needs his 45-year old vial of Carter's Little Pills (what were they, and why were they so small?), his Grecian Formula (hell, he'd need a gallon to color every gray hair on his body!), and his 30-year-old tube or Preparation-H (really, when was the last time he jammed that stuff up his rear and who was the last one to use the tube? Was it Dad?).

No, the manopausal male cleans out his medicine cabinet and rids himself of his history:  decades of expired drugs that were once so potent they could turn his tongue green and make his eyeballs spin in their sockets.  Now, these vials are only toxic to look at.  The sight of them sickens him, as he realizes that some day soon he will be self-supporting the entire pharmaceutical industry through a single refill.

Eventually the older male realizes that he will no longer need a decongestant or a cough syrup--especially the 25-year-old variety that his been sitting on the shelf since the Reagan administration.  Rather, if he becomes ill, he will use his sick days and enjoy a week's vacation at home watching The Young and the Restless.  He will fix himself hot chicken soup and order Chinese.  He will cough up a lung, return to work, and tell Finkelstein in accounting that he was working from home and actually accomplished more because he didn't have to wear a paisley necktie.

Once the manopausal male has cleaned out his medicine cabinet, he can begin utilizing this space for other ends: storing flashlight batteries, stockpiling small bags of nacho chips, and decorating the second shelf with miniature sculptures created from toenail clippings and toothpaste.

Later, he will consult his doctor and ask for the drugs he really needs.  These he will buy in bulk from Costco and consume like jelly beans.

And his wife will ask him every morning:  "Have you taken your pills?"