Buying a Hiccup

I was in the Wal-Mart the other day looking for some cough medicine. A man and his wife were blocking my way because they were looking at every package comparing the ingredients. They were getting on each others nerves a bit, too, because the man had a severe case of the hiccups, and they were keeping him from completing his sentences. They were the kind of hiccups that were uncontrollable, and they shook him with each, "Hic!"  I was being prevented from getting my cough medicine by this predicament. I decided to draw on my experience as a middle school teacher. The following is a true account of what happened. I bought his hiccups.

I walked up to the man and told him the following:  "I see you have a good case of the hiccups, and I would like to buy them off of you."

I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my wallet. "I've got ten dollars here, and I am willing to give it to you if you will just hiccup for me one more time." While I said that sentence, I opened my wallet and pulled out a ten dollar bill and held it out to him. As I finished the sentence, his eyes grew large as he looked at the saw buck and then looked up at me. I said, "Now, it has to be a real hiccup, not a fake one. Just hiccup for me one more time, and this can be yours." Silence reigned while the cycle of hiccups was interrupted. He said, "They are gone. I've been hiccuping all over this store. I was hiccuping back in the garden section, and now they are gone."

I have performed this buying of the hiccup for over twenty years and have not lost a dime. After I first heard about the trick, I began offering a quarter. That worked, so then I started offering fifty cents. Finally, I would offer a dollar. On this particular day, I didn't know it, but all I had in my wallet was a ten dollar bill, so I offered that. It was the most expensive hiccup I ever bought. And, it didn't cost me a thing.

How does it work? Hiccups are an involuntary response. A person has no control over them. You can fake hiccups, but you cannot purposefully hiccup for real. When I offer to buy a hiccup and the offer is real, it flips a switch in the person's brain. Now, they are focusing on trying to hiccup, and since you cannot will a genuine hiccup, time passes, and the hiccups are gone.

The man and his wife were amazed, and I put the ten bucks back in my wallet, picked out my cough medicine, and headed for the check-out.