The weather is wreaking havoc on my allergies. One day it’s 75 and sunny, the next we have thunderstorms, the next there’s a low of 38 degrees, the next it’s 55 and drizzly. Any time the weather changes, I wake up feeling like an elephant is standing with its forelegs on my brow furrows and its hind legs on my cheeks. The elephant has taken up permanent residence of late.

To add dust mites to injury, I skipped the thorough housecleaning this week. I did the bathrooms on Friday, but Sundays are for dusting and vacuuming and cleaning the floors and I just… didn’t do it this week. Listen, it was a grey, dreary Sunday and my family just wanted to sleep in and pursue solitary, quiet activities all day and I could not drum the energy it would have required to badger them into doing housework with me. Nor the energetic resentment it would have required to do the housework by myself. At the time, it felt like I was getting away with something, but now I have Regrets; apparently one week plus one day’s worth of dust is too much for my overly touchy immune system.

All this means that I’ve been sneezing a lot. A lot a lot.

Oh – and I have observed something interesting, which is that my sneezing habits have changed over time. I used to be a one-and-done sneezer. But in the past few years, it’s usually a one-two punch of sneezing. I’ve always felt a mix of sympathy and curiosity toward those people who sneeze multiple times in one go – you know, like five times in quick succession, and it’s always five on the dot. It must be so irritating/exhausting to be in a work environment and to KNOW that you will sneeze no fewer than X times and have coworkers say “bless you” after each one, thinking your sneezes are complete. Perhaps this is less of an issue now, in The Time of Zoom. I don’t know.

I do know that my family gets curiously irritated with me when I sneeze. Especially my husband. Look, I get it. Sneezes can be startling and they require a response, so you have to be on the alert when someone gets that watery-eyed look that means an achoo is imminent.  And I am also painfully aware that when my allergies are all hot under the collar, I can sneeze A LOT. Like… a dozen times. Not all in a row, but with a few seconds’/minutes’ pause between each one. 

My husband typically gets annoyed first. “Geez,” he might say. “What’s wrong with you?” But not in, like, a caring/concerned way. More like in the way he might say “What’s wrong with you?” if I started making a spit fountain with my Diet Coke in the middle of a restaurant. (We don’t go to restaurants anymore; this is just an example.) You know. A mix of disdain and annoyance. 

(He has also taken issue with the MANNER of my sneezing. I apparently don’t… let it out enough for him. And I admit, my sneezes are fairly contained. But that’s just the way I sneeze. While I maintain that my sneeze technique just bugs him for whatever reason, he claims that he’s afraid I will rupture an aneurysm in my brain or something; this is apparently a real thing; I just googled it. To appease him, I have tried to be more extravagant in my sneezing, but a) it’s very difficult to change the way you have been executing an involuntary function your entire life and b) it’s gross. It gets saliva and snot all over the place, and by “the place” I mean the interior of my elbow. If most people are sneezing like this, and you KNOW not everyone is making use of their elbow, no wonder colds and flus and other viruses get around so much. Ew.) 

I have pointed out to him that getting annoyed with my sneezing is a ridiculous response. The sneezing is involuntary. As soon as I start on one of my sneezing fits, I try to resolve the issue by blowing my nose and/or taking an allergy pill. He has eased up his cranky commentary with time. (But I’m betting he isn’t less annoyed; he is just biting his tongue.)

(And I get it – really, I do. Anyone who has been around a coworker or a family member with the sniffles or a persistent cough or a throat clearing understands that a repetitive sick noise is very grating indeed. But I kind of feel like the sneezing is slightly different? It’s not daily; even when I have a sneezing spasm, it goes on for minutes, not hours. And it – so far – has NEVER HAPPENED when either of us is trying to fall or stay asleep. Okay, maybe it IS super annoying but it’s TEMPORARY at least.)

Even Carla has to make some sort of comment when I get going. At least she’s not annoyed by me (yet). But she will pipe up with something like, “You’re sure sneezing a lot.” 

Yes, I know. Thank you. I had also noticed that I have just sneezed twelve times in the past three minutes. It’s not fun for ME EITHER, I ASSURE YOU. 

Maybe the REAL issue is what I mentioned before, that social convention requires a response to sneezing. (A POLITE response; “geez” doesn’t count.) And if you feel like you have to respond to every sneeze… and there are 15 sneezes… well, I can see how that would be indeed trying. 

We have a little tradition in our family where you say “bless you” for the first sneeze, and then, should there be a second, you say “gesundheit.” (And the sneezer responds in English to the first blessing and in German to the second. I know. We are weird.) I suppose we could do French for the third sneeze, but no one does. Instead, by the third sneeze, everyone is annoyed.

I propose that, universally, we should acknowledge the first two sneezes, and then – if others follow – we ignore them and move on with our lives. Honestly, I would be FINE without acknowledging them at all; after all, sneezes should belong to the category of other bodily emissions that come with being human – hiccups, gas, sweat – that we all pretty much pretend don’t exist when we encounter them in the wild. I don’t know why sneezes get special treatment; I think originally blessings were meant to ward off the plague, which, okay, perhaps we can all use ALL the blessings we can get these days.