Editor’s note: This column is from the 2021 Crumbs of Candor archive.

Do children today still play “doctor” like my generation did? In the 1950s, play was centered on the familiar, so playing house, school or doctor was prevalent.

Do you remember those little toy doctor bags with all the miniature medical helps in them — tiny stethoscopes, hammers to check reflexes, candy pills, strap-on headlamps, tongue depressors and so on? The doctor bags were always black, but the ones available for wannabe nurses were usually white.

Those little bags were always on my wish list, and I actually received a nurse’s bag once. However, my mother was the opposite of a hoarder. She didn’t keep much, and so it disappeared in increments, along with mine and my sister’s “Howdy Doody” puppet dolls — now worth a small fortune.

Having experienced various and very serious medical ailments, and being the eternal truth seeker since toddlerhood, I have a head filled with more medical knowledge than the average septuagenarian. It’s important for me to know about my medical conditions, causes, cures and especially the side effects of medications prescribed.

To date, no one has accused me of practicing medicine without a license, yet despite no formal medical training, my family often consults me before calling a doctor.

Anyway, as the eldest sibling and the eldest cousin, my preference was to play the lead role when Doctor was the game, thus leaving the way for the others to line up as patients — unless a nurse was needed. Playing the role of patient was not my forte then or now.

In doctor games, we experienced a few memorable episodes. Two of my younger siblings, whose names are not to be publicized, once decided multiple doses of the laxative, also known as the fake chocolate candy called Ex-Lax, should be used during their game.

Let’s just say, the end results were typical yet unexpected for the participants.

This may not be related to playing doctor, but while visiting my grandmother for my fifth summer on earth, my uncle (nine years my senior) and some of his gawky chums were amazed to hear me say I didn’t mind taking castor oil.

Unheard of in that circle of awkward teenagers, they offered me a nickel to take a dose.

Despite their surprise at seeing me get it down so easily, they wanted to see it again. By the end of their “game,” I had a handful of nickels, and they had an empty medicine bottle. They also had tanned hides when my grandmother discovered their sinister plot.

Of course, exactly like the Ex-Lax episode, the concept of time is nonexistent for young children, so I failed to make the correlation between the dosages and the eventual outcome.

My husband and his older sister, Rosie, played “doctor,” too. She was the doctor, and he, as the unfortunate middle child, was naturally the patient. Their ma had saved a couple of gallons of peach juice to make into jelly and was waiting for pay day to roll around to buy sugar and Sure Jell, so they never suspected she would miss a little.

Apparently, this mystic elixir was useful regardless of the pretend ailment, so over and over, she fed him spoonfuls of the — unbeknownst to them — now fermented peach juice. Yes. He got drunk. Rosie was clearly a fine doctor, because he surely felt no pain.

Regrettably, this was around the end of World War II, when polio was epidemic and terrified both young and old. Several classmates survived but were literally crippled in various ways as a result of their affliction with polio.

Ma was busy in the kitchen when little Bobby tried to enter the back door. There were two small steps leading into the house, but in his inebriated state, he couldn’t navigate them. Repeatedly, he steadied himself on the door jamb as he struggled to step up. He teetered and swayed but didn’t give up.

When Ma looked up from her work, she was horrified. In her mind’s eye, her baby was stricken with that dreaded plague. In her panic, it took some time to figure out the cause of his current condition.

There were no phones or extra cars in that era, so many crises were solved or endured alone. Rosie and Bobby were afraid of the consequences should they admit they had used her peach juice, so it was like pulling hen’s teeth to get them to fess up.

Ma was engulfed with relief when she discerned her 4-year-old pride and joy did not indeed have the plague but rather was just plumb snockered. What a relief!