This is a story about two good ol’ boys named Floyd and Boyd.
They’re just regular guys living in the American Southeast. They’ve been best friends since childhood. They both married their sweethearts, got good jobs, raised their kids okay, made good lives. They weren’t “smart” but they’d both say they know enough.
So one day Floyd sees Boyd looking depressed. Floyd asks Boyd what’s wrong.
“Got back from the doctor’s,” Boyd said. “He says I got cancer.”
“No way!” exclaimed Floyd. “Durn it, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” Boyd says, “doc says he’s got to plan out this regimen of drugs and radiation that’ll make me lose my hair and all, and I’ll lose a lot of weight, but that I might just survive.”
Floyd waives his hand dismissively. “Hooey! Doctors don’t know what they’re talking about! I had cancer once.”
Boyd was surprised. “You? You had cancer?”
“Heck yeah,” Floyd said. “And I beat it too! You know how? I had this special cure my doc told me about. Didn’t need no drugs or radiation. He said I just needed to take this every day and I’d be cured. Sure ‘nuf, no more cancer.”
Boyd’s face turned to optimism. “You remember what that cure was?”
Floyd said he’d get the formula to him. Sure enough, the next day, Floyd handed Boyd a shopping list of things.
“Now just mash them up like the instructions say,” said Floyd, “and you take that every day no matter what, an’ you’ll be cured in no time!”
“Okay,” Boyd replied.
“You gotta make sure you don’t let the doc fill your head with that junk about drugs and radiation,” Floyd said. “This will work! Trust me.”
Boyd took the list over to his wife. She was a good woman who loved her husband, but she also wasn’t an idiot. She was skeptical of Floyd’s cure. But, she loved her husband, and Boyd told her that Floyd would spin a yarn about anything, but the one thing he wouldn’t lie about was his health. So if Floyd says this stuff cured his cancer, then that’s enough for Boyd.
For the first few weeks, Boyd took the cure every single day like Floyd said, and Boyd sure felt good. He felt really good! His doctor wasn’t happy about the cure, but Boyd insisted on it, just like his friend told him to. No drugs, no radiation, just this cure every single day.
It didn’t taste good. It was rather bitter. Sometimes it made Boyd sick to his stomach, sometimes it would be all he could take, but he still took it every single day, just like Floyd said.
As it so happens, Floyd’s job required him to travel for long stretches of time. He’d go to conventions and trade shows, hype his product and make some sales, and go from city to city before coming home. This time around was no exception. He was out for nearly two months.
When Floyd came home, though, he learned that his best friend had just died in the hospital and the funeral service was the next day. He got dressed up, then joined his wife as they paid their respects at the funeral. Boyd’s wife was sad and bitter. But she kept it to herself during the funeral, just doing everything she can like a good widow would to keep things together as they put her husband into the ground.
Afterward, at the wake, Floyd was able to talk to Boyd’s wife and ask what happened. With tears running down her face, she told Floyd what happened after he left.
“He did everything you said he needed to do,” she said. “You told him ‘no doctors’ and ‘no drugs’ and ‘no radiation’, and he did that! But he still got sicker and sicker! Finally we had to take him to the hospital, and the doctors there said that the cancer was everywhere, and maybe if we took him to the doctors early, he’d be alive today. But he still took that cure of yours every single day! Every single day! Even when the doctors said it wouldn’t help him at all and that it was actually making him even sicker, Boyd still insisted, and he told me to keep giving him it no matter what. I even had to go to court to stop the doctors from overruling Boyd, because he believed that this would cure him.”
Floyd was dumbfounded. “But it should have helped him. It cured my cancer.”
At that moment Floyd’s wife hit Floyd’s arm hard repeatedly.
“Floyd! You dumb sum-beotch! You told Boyd you had cancer?”
“Heck yeah,” Floyd said to his wife. “You were there! You know I had it! And we cured it!”
Floyd’s wife hit his arm hard again with even more force.
“Floyd,” his wife said with anger in her eyes, “you had *cataracts*! Not cancer! And this stuff didn’t cure you of it. You were taking it to stop your diarrhea.”
Floyd looked at his wife with a dumbfounded expression and then asked, “Are you sure it was that?”
Let’s get brutally honest here... sometimes stupidity and blind trust in the wrong things can kill you. Friends may have some good advice, but if your friend isn’t a doctor, then you really shouldn’t be trusting him on things that are contrary to what doctors are telling you about your health. That is especially true when it comes to so-called “cures” being touted by politicians and media personalities in lieu of sound medical advice.
Friends don’t give friends snake oil cures.
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