Take Your Vitamins

I love vitamins. I know that sounds weird, but you probably need to know that most of the vitamins I take are gummy vitamins, and it’s like starting your day with candy. Candy that’s GOOD FOR YOU. And yes, I’m a “past-middle-aged” woman (unless I’m going to live to be one hundred and ten) and I’m too old to care if you mock me because they’re delicious. Every morning, I come downstairs and start my day with fruit-flavoured multi-vitamins, orange vitamin C, citrus-y Vitamin D and strawberry-vanilla Biotin. I take two of each, not because I have to but because I WANT to. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever cared about vitamins—even The Flintstones couldn’t tempt me to chew the grape sawdust that passed for a treat when I was a kid. Of course, I was an extremely picky child—you know how some parents puree vegetables into spaghetti sauce to disguise the taste? I wouldn’t even eat spaghetti sauce. Or pasta. In fact, the bulk of my diet was peanut butter on white bread and plain hamburgers. As an adult, I have a wide palate, and I’ll try, and eat, almost anything. I still draw the line at beets and peas, but everything else is fair game. Yet, like a child, I still need to have my vitamins disguised with copious amounts of sugar and gelatin. The only thing better than gummy vitamins would be if there was some kind of vitamin powder you could put into white wine, then I’d be the healthiest lush on the planet.

But despite my passion for vitamin candy, there IS one thing I hate about vitamins, and that’s shopping for them.

1) It doesn’t matter what time I go, or what store I go to, the vitamin aisle is always crowded by at least half a dozen people, all perusing the selection like they’ve never seen vitamins in their lives and are astounded that they exist. I’ve seen people take less time at art galleries or puppy parties than they do in the vitamin aisle. (Slight tangent—wouldn’t the world be a much better place if we could go to puppy parties once a week? How many puppies would we need? I’m thinking 6 minimum). Anyway, there I am, trying to find my vitamins, surrounded by people who are like f*cking ENTHRALLED by Magnesium. Even now, with Covid and stores limiting the number of people in them at any given time, the vitamin aisle is still the most popular hangout in the place. The other day I went grocery shopping at a store with a twenty-person limit, and TWO OF THEM were in the vitamin aisle, blocking my way to delicious health. Seriously, go look at margarine. That’s where the really big decisions need to be made if my recent experience watching people scrutinize margarine tubs is any indication.

2) There are way more brands and types of vitamins than are necessary. The vitamin aisle at my drug store is over 50 feet long and four shelves high. You’d think it would be alphabetical but it’s not, at least in no way I can discern. Some places group them by brand, some places by purpose, some by colour, some by flavour…

Vitamin Shelf Stocker: Where should I put the Vitamin C?
Vitamin Overlord: Next to the Echinacea.
Vitamin Shelf Stocker: Why? I thought it should go next to the Calcium…
Vitamin Overlord: Echinacea and Vitamin C are both immune system boosters. Put them on the bottom shelf where no one can find them. Screw your immune system, Brad!
Vitamin Shelf Stocker: Who’s Brad?
Vitamin Overlord (mutters): No one important.

See, and this is why the vitamin aisle is always crowded, because no one can find anything thanks to Brad.

In other news, I received an email from Amazon the other day about something I might be interested in based on my “current activity”. It was a recommendation for The Dome. I wrote back and said, “Thanks. I AM very interested in this because I WROTE IT. Lol.” They wrote back with a very snarky and passive-aggressive response that I shouldn’t have emailed them back because there was no one there to respond to me. The email was signed “Brad”.

43 thoughts on “Take Your Vitamins”

  1. My Mom used to buy us Flintstones vitamins when I was a kid. You talk about candy. I used to sneak extra ones whenever I could… it’s a wonder I didn’t OD myself on Vitamin Whatever Was In Those Things. They really should have made a candy out of them…

    As a professional shelf stocker, I will attest to the epic flustercluck that is the vitamin aisle. They USED to be in (mostly) alphabetical order…. but then they changed it this year to something like you described, putting like vitamins together regardless of their alphabetical names! So, like Brad, we just put them wherever…

    Bonus: Our vitamin counter faces the actual Pharmacy counter… so I can imagine how crowded with people it is during the day when I’m thankfully tucked away in bed!

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    • Looking back, I should be dead with all the Flintstone Vitamins I ate in a day! They were so good and we didn’t have candy back then like kids do now. I still pause and want to buy them, but refrain because I think there are better.

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  3. I was kind of a picky eater but I had to sit at the table until I finished so I didn’t have much choice, and the night I asked for plain spaghetti with no sauce my mother had a minor breakdown. There was also the morning I ate half a jar of Flintstones vitamins. Fun fact: they are just candy. They’re terrible, chalky, bad tasting candy. If they had vitamins or something in them I’m sure I would have had bad side effects. This idea of vitamins in wine is something you should explore, though. If nothing else it’ll prompt them to reorganize the vitamin aisle. Maybe.
    By the way I’ve been to many puppy parties, with Dalmatians, Boxers, and Weimaraners. Weirdly enough most people went off to drink wine. I’m not complaining, though. They left me to play with the puppies, which I could do for hours.

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    • I had to sit until I was done too—strange paediatric advice which I don’t think they do anymore. When Kate was little, I just made her a separate meal of foods she liked until her tastebuds developed 😊

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  4. Another good chuckle this morning. . . well there’s ten minutes left of morning so still qualifies. Several good posts today and it counteracts the news which has been incredible lately. I agree puppy time should be at least a weekly requirement for mental health. Have a good week. Oh and be sure to order a copy of “Dome”!😄

    Sent from my iPad

    >

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  5. Scribblans says:

    “There are way more brands and types of vitamins than are necessary.”

    I believe that is the truth right there. You do know there are enough already in food? Well, proper food anyway. 😉

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  6. Somehow, gummy vitamins have a very medicine-y taste to me. I’ve tried several different types, but now I know it’s that a-hole vitamin overload being a dick. I have to take b-complex, vitamin k, calcium, iron, micronized DHEA and that’s WITH my women’s multivitamin. Vitamins overload needs to die!! 🔪🗡🪓✂️

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  8. I remember sneaking extra chewable vitamins when I was a kid and my parents yelling when the vitamins were disappearing faster than they should have – my parents problem was that since there were three of us they weren’t sure who was to blame. I’m still not sure if it was just me or my sisters were taking extras too.

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  9. I started taking those Goli Apple Cider Vinegar gummies. If you smell them first they smell gross. They taste pretty good and it is making my digestion fantastic! They aren’t cheap but they aren’t the most expensive out there.

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  10. I was a kid that ate anything. Orange aspirins? Oh, yeah, along with Flintstone vitamins, broccoli and brussies (and cauliflower and spinach, and liver and onions). Little sis was not so willing; she had rules that her food couldn’t touch. Nor could the juices from one, say, peas, touch another food. (She also didn’t like peas if they were too mushy.) Otherwise, that was it, and so she’d sit, into the darkness, refusing to eat, but not allowed to leave the table. I used to sneak in and eat her food for her.

    My wife, also a picky eater as a child, fed her dog and cat under the table, or hid food in her milk or napkin. Her mother had to know, but never said a word.

    Cheers

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    • I was one of those “foods can’t touch” kids too. When I think back to the way we forced kids to eat things before their palates were ready or left them to sit alone at the table til bedtime, it makes me cringe in remembrance!

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  11. I get my little girl the gummy vitamins and she loves them…and I sneak myself one or two every now and again too. I’d have one every day, like her, but I paid extra to have gummies shaped like Peppa Pig and it was a LOT extra!

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  14. Suzanne, I’m not big into swallowing pills, but my doctor says I have to take a Vitamin D each and every day. Also, I take a Tagamet because acid heartburn is no fun. I understand about crazy selfish people keeping you from getting what you need at the store. Don’t get me started. I figure if I’m going to get my “vitamins,” it’s going to be at our local Jamba Juice. Just walking in, I feel a ton healthier and it smells wonderful. No germy sickness could ever live there! Also, it’s no big deal to get them to add an immune booster to my Berry Lime Sublime smoothie! Yummie and healthy. A little expensive, but so worth it. I’m craving one now! Alas, they close at 8 PM. Also, I don’t think there’s a Brad working at the Jamba Juice I go to. 🙂 Mona

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  16. Yeah, what is WITH the weird vitamin arrangement in the store? It takes me at least 25 minutes to find anything. You look and look and look and when you find it – sold out.

    As for Flintstone vitamins, I hear you, sistah. We had those things as a kid, and they certainly are grape=flavoured sawdust. Not eating Flintstone vitamins is a huge bonus of being a grown-up.

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  18. Some of my favorite My Dang Blogisms are the pretend (though potentially 100% likely to occur) conversations you have. Always make me smile. Did your mom wreck you for beets too? Mine force-fed pickled beets to my brother and me when we were kids—couldn’t leave the table without choking them down. Why, oh why do parents do that??

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