How do you cure a hiccup? Current Science, a national newspaper for middle-school students, posed that question recently and received a variety of suggestions. Some were old standbys; others more offbeat.
Mentioned most often: holding your breath and drinking water. Other popular solutions: eating sugar or peanut butter, scaring the hiccuping person and breathing into a paper bag.
There was also an outpouring of truly wacky suggestions. Obviously, these should not be tried, Current Science editors said, but they show amazing creative thinking.
For example, Michaela Miller, a seventh-grader in Greensboro, N.C., suggested "you stick out your tongue, then swallow, blink your eyes twice, then hop once and hit your foot."
