Poisoned In My Childhood

Yep ... it's true, just ask my mom.  Back in the early 1960's we lived in a somewhat rural area in Utah.  Dad had gotten a big box of beautiful ripe apricots from someone ... these were picked from a farm or commercial orchard perhaps .. unbeknown to me ... (at the ripe old age of five) I ate some fruit directly from the box without the benefit of washing first.  Boy, they were good tasting apricots ... who could stop eating just one. Two, three, four, five ... apricots later.  Within a day I began to get SICK ... and WEAK ... and had to eventually go to the doctor.  He gave me some awful big-old-chewable-disc-shaped iron pills (the size of a nickle) .. to take daily.  I believe he said I was anemic (fuzzy here .. many moons ago).  I did feel ill for weeks .. perhaps months.  I couldn't sleep at night ... I would get sweaty and chilled .. the only comforting thing to do was take a warm bath for hours it seemed.  No sleep .. restless .. ill .. to make matters worse .. the doctor then prescribed codeine to help me sleep at night (huh).  Well, I became rather attached to this happy medicine until my mom made me quit taking it cold turkey ... the whole incident is still a painful memory after nearly 45 years.   I can only imagine what type of pesticide was used back then .. this was before the EPA started regulating such chemicals.

Soon .. we'll talk turkey about genetically modified (GM/GMO) foods ... aka Frankenstein Food ... and how some GM seed has pesticide in its DNA.

clip art from public domain here