On Sneezes

Sneezes are interesting things. I've long found it odd that one can "steal" a sneeze by touching someone in the throes of a long sneeze windup. I don't recommend doing so all that much, of course, as it tends to make the victim of said theft quite angry.  In general, I'm inclined to argue about the terminology there, since I think that you're not so much stealing the sneeze as destroying it. It's not like I can steal someone's sneeze then enjoy it for myself.  Not that I'd really want to.  Really, I'm not quite sure why people get angry about having their sneezes stolen.  But they do. OK, I'm not being entirely truthful, I understand why at least one person would be angry.  One of my Former Neighbor Chicas always claimed that sneezes were "orgasmic," a description I could never agree with.  Still, if I thought of my sneezes that way, I would probably be pretty pissed off if someone came along and stole one.

But Stolen and Orgasmic aren't the only kind of sneezes out there. There are also Multiple Sneezes. Another Former Neighbor Chica couldn't sneeze just once. Nor twice. Nor three times. She generally sneezed at least 4 times, and sometimes upwards of 7. (I suspect this tendency made her roommate, the Orgasmic Sneezer, quite jealous, especially since I can't recall having ever seen/heard the Orgasmic Sneezer actually let one fly. But then again, maybe that was something she was only willing to do in private.) Once, whilst Lawton and I were playing PlayStation hockey, the Multiple Sneezer unleashed one, which Lawton responded to with a "Bless you."

Another sneeze followed, leading to a "Gesundheit" from me.

A third one, met with silence.

A Fourth, causing Lawton to say, "Cut it out."

A fifth.  "Gahdam!" says I.

A sixth, resulting in a resounding, "Bitch, please!" from Lawton.

And that was the end of it because we were all laughing. From that day forward, those responses acted as a sort of protocol for handling the Multiple Sneezes, and that particular female always worked hard to stop before getting the dreaded, "Bitch, please!"

That kind of talk wouldn't have been at all appropriate for the most memorable sneeze from my college days. One day in a huge lecture hall (It was a Chemistry class, I think. I can't be sure, though; I had a bunch of classes in that same room.), a dude about six rows down from me brought his hand up to his mouth to restrain an impressively violent sneeze.  It was a good thing he did, too.  At least it was good for the people in front of him. As he slowly and uncertainly moved his hand away from his face, we could clearly see that his hand was completely covered in Ghostbusters-grade slime. It was disgusting. Naturally, my friends and I sitting there engaged in several minutes of that kind of silent but seemingly endless lecture hall laughter.  I don't remember what that guy did with his handful of snot, but I know he didn't have a lot of options. He was smack dab in the middle of the row, and he didn't seem to have a hanky with him. He might have even been wearing shorts leaving him with a much smaller surface area of clothing to wipe it off.

But I didn't really start this post to write about Stolen, Orgasmic, Multiple, or even Voluminous sneezes. The other day I experienced a new kind. Just before lunch, I had filled up a water bottle and was heading back toward my office. As I reached for the door handle, a sneeze sneak attacked me. What to do?! The hand on the door handle was obviously too far away to get back to my face to cover it up.  I had a big water bottle in my other hand, and that wasn't going to be much use for containing the sneeze. It would really be uncool to sneeze onto the door handle. A co-worker was right behind me making loosing the thing into the air in general or especially directly behind me a bad option. So I kind of pointed my head down, stopped, and tried to constrain the thing with my mouth. I don't know if you've ever tried this, but I strongly suggest that you don't.  There are physics involved, see. I remember in elementary school that everyone liked to talk about how sneezes travel at 100 miles per hour and how your heart stops when you sneeze.  I don't know about any of that, but I do know that this particular effort felt like someone had shot me in the gullet with a slingshot. Or maybe as if someone had used my mouth as one of those bomb squad shells to contain an explosion. My throat hurt for a good 30 minutes.

Beware the Bomb in Your Mouth Sneeze.