Lobotomy Sneeze

I like to catalog the way other people sneeze.

Yep, this here is a highly reflective, ultra sophisticated post. About sneezing.

Also called sternutation, sneezing is the body’s way of removing an irritation from your nose. Explosively.

When I sneeze, which I have been doing a great deal of in this, the tail end of hay fever season, I irritate my throat enough so that I chip away at my voice. Once, in a fit of frustration at my friend Leeba’s refusal to drive to New England to visit me from Montreal because she had laundry to do, I offered to do her damn wash if she would just get in the bloody car.

What I didn’t know was that her cat liked to sleep in the laundry pile. What she didn’t know was that I am ridiculously allergic to cats and that cat hair, not necessarily WITH the cat from which it originates, is enough to set me to sneezing. Eight-one times in a row, in fact. I know this because my kids, sitting sneezeside, counted.

They did the counting loudly, so as to be heard over the sound of my sternutation. That day, much to the horror of my friend, I sneezed my voice entirely away. I barely managed a whisper.

Since then, I rarely sneeze in that extreme a succession. And hallelujah for that. I do, however, sometimes sneeze so powerfully, that my brain gets shaken and stirred in what I like to refer to as a lobotomy sneeze; the whole darn world is NEW after the sneeze clears away the cerebral cobwebs. Feels good, too: a little sneezlegasm.

My daughter Boo’s sneezes crack me up; the noise sounds as if her head explodes, kind of an, “AHHHTCHoooooSPLAT.” She laughs about it too, and although she tries to alter the sound (because her friends bug her about it), she can’t. Reflexive and all. But is it? Can we control how we sound when our bodies expel the little microscopic whatnot that irritates us?

Then, there’s my friend Victoria’s sneezes, which sound mannered and dignified; she lets out a delicate little “atsioo” and she’s done.

On the other end of the sneeze spectrum, an old college professor always sounded like he needs to yell his sneeze, as if he didn’t get enough attention or something. His sounded like a big holler: “ATCHooooooooooooooooooooOOO!” He’d do it frequently, too and just as frequently, startled his students. Seriously, “ATCHooooooooooooooooooooOOO!”

And there are those moments when the sneeze won‘t arrive; it hovers and taunts no matter how many bright lights you look at. Those teasing little creeps, those, if you will, sneases , are just mean.

What can I say? My Kleenex box, presently a fixture by my monitor, inspired me.

Happy Sneezing.