Does anyone remember Luden’s? More candy than cough drop? I guess you can still buy them, but I don’t recall having seen them for ages. I loved those things in grade school—probably because my mother never, EVER bought them; I had to cadge them off friends like an addict.

No, in my parents’ house, if you had a sore throat, it was salt water gargles twice a day for you! And on the off chance you got medicine, it was gonna taste like medicine, by God. Halls or Vick’s. None of that cherry nonsense.

When I hit college, you’d think I’d have binged on cough drops, but I didn’t. My mom’s habits had become my own, so medicine taste persevered—but on my own, I bought Nyquil, which packed a much stronger punch than anything my mom ever gave me.

But the interesting thing is that I almost never developed a persistent barking cough anyway. Sore throat, yes. Clogged head, boy howdy. But a cough? Maybe once every two years or so, and I tended to hydrate those away.

My husband, on the other hand, is a cougher extraordinaire and cough drop connoisseur who has settled on Halls cherry for the duration. Lozenges are all over our existence. A stash in every nightstand, a bag in every glove box. At least two in his pocket when he leaves the house. All of them in varying degrees of gooiness; I have no idea how much paper he ingests with those things.

I branched out last time I bought cough drops and got Cepacol, which comes in those blister packs. I’m not sure how long ago, but I know I’ve had a baggie of those in my purse for at least a year. I will say they hold up better, but I think the hubs was not sold on them.

Maybe I should go back to Luden’s?