Woke up with an out-of-control nose. Ten minutes of non-stop, violent sneezing. Face screwed up, eyes watering, body frozen as the sneeze builds... all that sneezy stuff.
There was a young guy on local TV a while ago who had been hiccupping for the past two or three years. Unable to stop. The TV people treated it as a bit of a joke at first, but it's ruined his life. Non-stop, violent sneezing would be even worse. It leaves you utterly knackered after only ten minutes!
I find things like that interesting. The little person inside your head who thinks s/he's in charge gets a disconcerting kick up the backside when the body suddenly decides it's going to do something unbidden. The illusion of control gets its foundations shaken, and we don't like that one little bit. Oh no we don't.
The ultimate body-decision is death, I suppose. Regardless of what the mind, the ego, the soul (call it what you like) wants, the body eventually decides enough is enough and stops working.
I remember lying in bed on holiday somewhere (Egypt, I think) and hearing an awful scream coming from the room above. A woman in dreadful distress, screaming things like: No! No! This can't be happening! over and over again.
We later learned her husband had a heart attack and died in bed, right next to her.
This can't be happening!
But it was, and it did - no matter how much she denied it.
Slightly worse than my sneezing fit, I guess.
09:19 AM
10:18 AM
(Not Egypt, Rose tells me. Skopelos. Must be wonderful to have a memory.)
03:22 PM
Posts
I used to sneeze like that every day when I was young. I kept a supply of tissues handy and always had some in my pocket or stuck into a book.
ReplyDeleteIt happens every once in a while now and it takes me back to my youth, the same way the smell of my dad's pipe tobacco would, or the sound of the NBC peacock signing off.
I was the same as a kid, Terry. I think it may have been dusty blankets etc. My nose improved in the early 1970s when we got our first duvet (called them 'continental quilts' back then).
ReplyDeleteWhat's the NBC peacock?
(Never mind. Just looked it up.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GohWSsFCkw
Hubby always sneezes in bouts of eleven, so I usually count down, knowing when it's going to end.
ReplyDeleteA clockwork husband. Every woman's dream, I should think. When you've had enough, just don't wind him up again.
ReplyDelete