By Chris Cosci

They come out of nowhere. One minute, everything seems normal. You're eating. You're talking. You're laughing. Suddenly, without warning, a small noise emanates from your throat: "hiccup."

Hiccups can be very frustrating, mostly because we know so little about them. The only thing that is truly known is how they occur: hiccups are an involuntary spasm of the diaphragm. The list of unknowns about hiccups is far lengthier. For starters, there is no scientific explanation of why hiccups occur. There is also no definitive, medically proven cure. And then there's the question of why the word is sometimes spelled "hiccoughs," yet is still pronounced exactly the same. Come on -- that's just wrong.

While nobody could ever provide a logical reason for that last question, just about everybody has a personal opinion on the first two mysteries. Some people say hiccups are caused by eating too fast. Others say they come from swallowing too much air. There are dozens of possibilities, but none of them are backed by science or medicine.

And that leads to the question, what purpose do hiccups serve? Not knowing why the body produces these hiccups in the first place, doctors are unable to determine any possible function. Some scientists argue that hiccups are a biological remnant of a primitive reflex that has long lost its functional importance. It's a rather intriguing explanation. Delusional, but intriguing.

The only purpose hiccups seem to serve is to entertain the people who don't have them. When somebody starts to hiccup, that person becomes an immediate center of attention. Everybody starts to stare, and when the next hiccup bursts forth, the spectators giggle. By the time the next couple of hiccups arrive, everyone is laughing out loud -- everyone, of course, except for the suffering victim.

For most people, being able to laugh at another's misfortune would be enough. However, it's the second big mystery of hiccups that leads to even more laughter at the expense of the victim. Despite their relative frequency, hiccups have no known cure. Because of this, everybody has devised his or her own method for curing these little annoyances.

Some people have rather straightforward cures: swallow three times while holding your breath, slowly sip some water, breathe into a paper bag, etc. Others take a more mental approach, determined that one can stop the hiccups simply by concentrating on them and waiting for the next one to come.

Then there are people who have devised cures seemingly created for no other purpose than to make the victim look like a complete and utter fool. These are the people who will tell you to lie on the floor and put your fists on your stomach. They'll suggest you tilt your head back, extend your right arm out and flex it repeatedly. Or maybe they'll have you cover your ears, press your nose shut, hold your head upside down, and drink a glass of water... all while singing MacArthur Park in French.

When the sufferer tries any of these so-called cures and finds out that it doesn't work, the person giving the advice will usually say something like, "hmmm, it always works for me." Then, suppressing the urge to burst into hysterics, that person will quickly exit the room to release the pent-up laughter.

Despite there being no explanation for the cause and no known cure, it's at least comforting to know that most bouts tend to last only a few minutes, usually no longer than a couple of hours. However, if you ever find yourself with a particularly bad case, you can always be thankful that you're not Charles Osborne.

Osborne is immortalized in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest attack of the hiccups. According to records, Osborne had the hiccups for 68 years, starting in 1922 and ending in 1990. If only he know how to say, "someone left the cake out in the rain" in French...