Vitamins
Jennifer Flaten

I ventured down the vitamin aisle the other day. I needed to replace my one-a-day. Yes, I take vitamins. I need to I have three children, children, who drained me of all my nutrients during pregnancy.

The slow depletion of my life force continues every day. For example, when I have to argue with one of my kids about why it isn’t appropriate to dress the cat in the old baby clothes they found in the basement.

Okay, that and the fact that I don’t always eat the healthiest, I try to eat right. What I had a carrot cake cupcake the other day that totally counts towards my veggie quota for the day. I figure I better hedge my bets and take a supplement.

Although I am not 100% positive that vitamins can help prevent colds, it doesn’t hurt. I mean the kids are walking germ bags, if taking a vitamin helps prevent me from getting the illness of the week that the kids bring home from school. I will do it.

It doesn’t matter I could eat the most perfectly balanced diet in the world and I would still have only a tenth of the energy my kids have. Of course, all the kids have to do is go to school and play.

I have to do all the other stuff, including all the worrying. They don‘t worry about anything…not even the stuff they should worry about. Yes, you should worry that climbing to the absolute top of the tree is a bad idea and maybe you shouldn’t do it because mom will kill you when she finds out you did. 

They wear me out. You would think that now that they are all older that it would get easier. Not true, while I no longer have the sleepless nights, I do need to use my brain more, such as when someone presses into service during homework time. I don‘t know about you but I think fractions take an extraordinary amount of brainpower.

As if that isn’t taxing enough, I need to keep track of what kid has drama club after school, what kid needs one hundred pounds of baking soda for a science project and what I need to pick up at the store-like more vitamins.

I rolled down the aisle checking out the selection of vitamins. It is amazing the wide variety of vitamins available. They cover every possible scenario, women’s active, men’s couch potato, women’s lustrous hair and so on.

Who knew choosing a daily vitamin could be so hard. All I want is a simple vitamin that includes iron. I don’t need one with boron or supersonic isotopes.

Along with the specific formulas I noticed a preponderance vitamins designed to look or taste like candy. I saw gummy bear vitamins, gumball vitamins and fruit chews. You would expect to see that in the children’s vitamin section but this was in the adult vitamin section.

I don’t know why vitamins need to be fruit flavored. You should swallow the vitamin without tasting it. If you hold it in your mouth long enough to taste something, you aren’t doing it right, instead, of flavored vitamins maybe the vitamins should come with an instructional video?

I don’t understand the appeal of gummy vitamins, for adults. As an adult, you are aware that the vitamin is in no way a sugary treat; am I right? And, don’t even get me started on vitamin gumballs. If you think vitamins themselves taste terrible, how would a gumball vitamin taste any better?

I tell the kids that medicine isn’t supposed to taste good; you aren’t supposed to want to eat an entire jar of medicine or, in this case, vitamins. Perhaps, they could make the human vitamins as they make the animal vitamins in a liquid form that you can just squirt on your food.