Half-Life

I have apparently contracted some sort of disease (Google "green ooze" for an example.)

So, since I don't like feeling symptoms, I grabbed my box of Sudafed, and went to town. There are two things I discovered: 1) On an empty stomach, Sudafed works REALLY fast, and 2), if consumed on an empty stomach, it is like you are having a controlled drug trip.

I was standing in my kitchen talking to Jeremy when, all of the sudden, his face folded in on itself so he was looking at his own chin.

"WHOA!" I looked down at the box to see if I had ODed, but the letters slid off the box and splattered on the linoleum.

"What?"

"Nothing...I need to go lay down..."

I carefully backed away, and ran into my two kiddies.

"Mommy?"

"Yeah? What the...?

As the day wore on, my family's faces started to go back to normal, luckily. I don't think I could have handled it if it was permanent.

As I lay in bed that night, struggling to breathe, I asked Jeremy if he would get me some more Sudafed. He brought in the box, and I asked him if it was 24 hour Sudafed, or what, and he said it was.

"Strange..." I thought. My symptoms were coming back, and all the fuzzy green trolls with bat wings that had been entertaining me all afternoon had disappeared, and it had only been less than 12 hours.

"Sudafed must have a half-life," I commented, throwing my 100,000,000,000 soggy tissue on the floor. It scuttled over to the others that were huddled on the floor. "How does half-life work, anyway?"
Jeremy's roving eye wandered back into it's socket.

"I dunno...there is some formula, but I don't know what it is."

I thought for a minute.

"I think it's like if something is good for 24 hours, you knock that time in half, and then half that time, and so on and then you add it all together...right?"

Jeremy shrugged, and his head disappeared into his neck.

I thought some more, but then stopped when I realized that I kept coming up with a number greater than 24. An iridescent fish swam around the ceiling, spelled out "YaHOOOO!" and then blipped from existence.

"I wonder if that is how gas works too," I said.

"What do you mean?" he asked, two snail-like eyeballs leering out of his neck hole.
"Well, you know how the first half of your tank lasts longer than the second half?"

"Okaaay...."

"Yeah."

SNORT GULP...yum...

I fell into a fitful sleep, and then woke up excited to take some Sudafed.

I looked at the box carefully: "Take every 6 hours."
"HEY!"
"What?" Jeremy was wading through the hip-deep pile of tissues.
"You said it was 24 hours!"
"No, YOU said it was, and I just repeated you," he said, shoveling the tissues into a garbage bag.
I looked at the box again: 24 Capsules

"NO, YOU just looked at how many were IN the box!"

"Whatever," he sighed, trying to dislodge a sticky tissue from his elbow.

"HA!" I said, justified. I popped two of those suckers and waited. After a few minutes, Jeremy's nose dropped to the floor and started sniffing around.

"Ah, that's better..."