Today I begin a three day ramble on the nature sneezing. It defines me. It is at the core of my very existence. It is hell on Earth.
I. A Sneeze for All Seasons
Most people associate sneezing with a particular season, usually spring. For me, however, sneezing is hardly relegated to any of Mother Nature’s quarterly reports. To the contrary, those respiratory convulsions afflict me all the year long. Spring is merely a furious crescendo of snot and burst blood vessels, with all the other seasons taking note and following suit to a lesser degree.
Summer. Sneezing in summer is largely a man-made calamity. Once you move south of the upper Great Lakes or northern New England, air conditioning is King. Indeed, I now believe most people are pathetically weak, shrinking and wailing in the face of an 85 degree day as if Satan had finally triumphed and unleashed Hell’s searing fireballs upon us.
My hatred for A/C is multi-faceted. To offer just a few complaints, it gives me a headache, it makes my face numb, it turns even mild perspiration into grime, and in any event, I’m a skinny fuck who prefers to be warm and adjusts easily to summer, even muggy ones here along the Chesapeake.
But more to the point, air conditioning sometimes induces sneezing fits. Probably not, Lord help me, if I’m just sitting in some vapid air conditioned box all day, breathing particulate matter and contemplating the finer points of a nuclear holocaust. But if I’m in and out of air conditioning on a hot day, perhaps doing some shopping, moving from natural warmth and humidity to the artificially dry and cool, and back again, a sneezing wave can descend upon me rather suddenly.
As best I can tell, it results from the accordion effect of fluids loosening and tightening in my head. Quite naturally, my body is loose and relaxed on a warm day. But walking into some frigid little hell hole instantly tightens everything up. I leave, and everything loosens again. My mucus, previously calm and unmolested, now descends in a torrent, accompanied by an onslaught of staccato explosions.
Man, that sucks.
Autumn. Fall is actually the season in which I am least likely to sneeze, though it hardly offers blanket immunity. While there are no major causes hounding me, as there are with the other three seasons, I still launch forth unexpectedly now an again. Most of those episodes fall into the vacuous category of Who The Hell Knows Why.
Maybe I spent a little too much time with a furry animal. Maybe some unknown allergens got caught in my mustache.
And no, I’m not shaving.
Or maybe I’m just destined to drop into a pit of snotty despair from time to time. But for whatever the reason, once in a while I still give it up in autumn.
Winter. Come winter, all is dead. Seasonal allergens are not a concern, and of course the dizzying burden of air conditioning is not an issue. However, moving between the cold air outside and warmth of homes and stores can bring on an effect similar to summer, as everything tightens and loosens repeatedly.
Winter also brings increased possibilities for sneeze-inducing pathogens, ranging from the common cold to some new specie-jumping strain of influenza that will have everyone wearing surgical masks and elbowing old people and children out of the way for a a vaccination.
However, though this piece would hardly suggest it, I’m actually pretty hardy. Most winters I don’t get sick at all. Too goddamn stubborn, most likely. But I’m not completely immune, so we can, at least to a modest degree, add winter’s sniffles to the mix when listing those things that cause me to sneeze.
Spring. For many people, spring is the most favored of all seasons. And I get it. Flowers are blooming, the weather is often delectable, the recession of winter raises everybody’s spirits, and there’s just something in the air that makes most people horny as fuck. Good stuff.
However, for me and the similarly afflicted, spring means seasonal allergies.
I’ve lived in a variety of North American climates, with varying vernal effects. By far the worst for me was New York City, where I was born and raised. Each spring, my face would just melt. My eyes, itchy and sore, were a constant source of tears, while my nose spilled forth with abandon, punctuated by frequent bouts of sneezing. It was so bad, that in high school my parents took me to see an allergist. He gave me prescription nasal spray and eye drops.
Nasal spray seems pretty self-explanatory, which is why, I guess, no one bothered showing me how to use it. You can’t botch the nasal part, of course; I’ve never seen anyone put it in their ear. But the “spary” was, pardon the pun, a bit mystifying to me.
Whenever I felt the need, I would lean my head back so that I was staring up at the sky, insert the nozzle, and squeeze hard, sending a jet stream of prescription drugs shooting halfway to my brain. It burned, it hurt, and it worked, probably a bit to well.
Down from my sinuses would pour forth copious gobs of mucus, along with rich, thick, crimson strains of blood. It didn’t occur to me that this might be bad.
As an adult I’ve also lived in Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, and now Maryland.
Michigan’s spring allergies were very similar to New York’s, but not as bad. Nebraska was quite reasonable, though hardly perfect. And as for Arizona, barely anything’s alive in the dessert of the greater Ph
oenix metroplex, including the morass of suburbanites doing lord knows what behind their eight foot, cinder block privacy fences. And so, gratefully, I did not sneeze much during my one spring there. Heck, didn’t have much mucus at all. Too dry. Just lots a cooters. That there’s pickin’ and flickin’ country.
Maryland is rotten. Not as a state, but for springtime allergies. Overwhelming physical fatigue through much of April is usually the worst aspect of it, but a little runniness and the occasional sneezing fit are certainly on the agenda. My doctor, who’s remarkably like a real doctor, not one of these modern cattle car operators, prescribes me a steroidal nasal spray.
I’ve since learned how to use it without causing too much cerebral hemorrhaging.
Tomorrow I will present a sonnet about sneezing, and talk about why you should never respond to a sneeze by saying “Bless you.”