Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson for January 10, 2018

I’m not sure if I can imagine durian-flavored medicine.

Often, when you ask “How bad can it be?” you’re on your way to finding out.

And she meant “Ick” too, Alice.

I like how the child’s eyes get more pronounced when she is paying attention in this strip.

How bad can it get? Threaten me with cherry flavored cough syrup and I will no longer have a cough. Years after having it forced on me as a child, I still can taste it and experience a remembrance of nausea.

Er…ish. Yeah, that’s what I meant; it’s cotton candy-ish. Although come to think of it, although it wasn’t exactly bad, I never much liked cotton candy. And cough syrups in general never seemed to do much.

I love it when something tastes horrible and that person wants to share this displeasure with me. It’s almost as if you think I’m not paying any attention to what you just said. What makes you think I am going to want to taste something that’s bad, I’ll take your word on it and leave me out.

I can STILL taste that damn Amoxicillin (pink stuff) to this day. (46 years old)

I can’t stop my wife from doing this with my grand-nieces. Dinner time: “I don’t know if you’ll like this, but…” They won’t. We don’t have our own kids, so she never learned better.

It’s supposed to taste bad; otherwise it wouldn’t work. Think of Buckley Cough Syrup (which is not as bad as some “medicinal liqueurs” (hello Unicum! (made by Zwack in Hungary)).

Anyone here old enough to remember the line “Tastes just like the syrup you put on ice cream!”

When we were old enough, Mom served wine at a family dinner. Sorry, but it tasted like cough medicine.

I still have nightmares about my first, and only, experience with cotton candy in postwar Atlantic City. The next day I pulled out 3 fillings with salt-water taffy and suffered the blame for years.

Alice caught you out that time, Madeline. Nothing for it but to take a dose of the pink stuff yourself in front of Alice, making it look yummy!

One morning at resident rounds we did an oral antibiotic tasting. Legit – flavor affects compliance.

Too late… Big mistake!

Don’t lie to the kid. Tell her the truth: that what tastes good to us as children often tastes bad to us as adults, and vice-versa. She either is or is not old enough to understand that truth, so you may as well find out which.