"Suppositories are the way to go."

My younger brother puts this sentence into the universe with the sort of confidence you'd expect to hear from a presidential hopeful. He is firm. He is unyielding. You look at the man as he speaks and know in your heart, "This is not this man's last experience with suppositories."

The whole conversation came up on our drive from Kentucky to New York. That makes 12 hours in the same car, 12 hours breathing each others space, 12 hours trying to keep the driver awake; this is how a person can run so far out of conversation that suppository stories are somehow plugged in (pardon the pun).

He is telling his best friend about the time I brought my good friend Caroline home last year, not knowing he was deathly ill. As a 21 year old man, this is not the way you wanna meet a beautiful young woman. He had, unbeknownst to me, just "doctored" himself. See, he was a desperate man. His intestines were completely backed up; so ill, so clogged, that he couldn't even keep a drop of water down without vomitting. This was a sick young man, indeed. So, he tells me that at this point of dehydration, he goes to the doctor and is given a choice: keep dry heaving everything (including medication) or sneak the medicine in the back door. And although he likes to think of that area as "Exit Only", he was left with little option.

This is the point in the story where he swears by the medication. Says that only 10 minutes later, he is in la-la-land and is finally able to sleep. After his nap, he could eat like a king and was feeling worlds better. He tells my mother that "suppositories are the way to go."

I'm not so confident in his little slogan. Now, at the risk of jinxing myself, I've never had to use a suppository; but even if there ever arose an instance where one of these horse pills was prescribed, it's still not the kind of motto I'd put on a button and campaign with. Call me crazy, Matt, but you're on your own here.