My wife and I had just gone to bed when my eyes started to water, my throat got scratchy and my nose got all plugged up. My allergies had hit me.
This has gone on for years. No one can tell what causes it, because it comes and goes so quickly and in all kinds of circumstances, weather and places. There is no logic to it. That fits me, illogical is my second name.
Anyway I am laying there trying to suffer through the 10 or 15 minutes the spell will last (and then it always disappears just like that) when suddenly I had to sneeze. It came out in a big burst, just like always, loud enough to at least be heard at the end of the block on a quiet night in August.
I guess my wife was slumbering off when it came out. She was startled and raised up in bed. I thought I was going to have to peel her off the ceiling it had scared her so bad.
“What was that?” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said in a stuffy nose kind of way. “It was me. It’s my allergies.”
“Geez you are loud when you sneeze,” she said. “I thought a cat had been skewered outside our bedroom window. I was just getting off to sleep too…”
I apologized again. She has a hard time getting to sleep and sometimes even sleeping at all many nights. Her doctors tell her it is for various reasons, but I know what it is. She is married to me. That would make anyone anxious enough to lay awake.
What happened that night made me think about sneezing. I have always been a loud sneezer, but my wife is very subdued even when she has a bad cold. Why the difference between us? Well I did some exploring–I actually found out that some researchers have done work on why some people are loud sneezers and others are more soft. Ultimately the research says that how we sneeze is an indication of our personality. Basically, extroverted people tend to sneeze loudly while introverted people tend to sneeze softly. That’s simplistic, because there are a lot of variables, but that is basically true they say.
Involuntary response
There is actually a lot written about the research on sneezing. Coughs and sneezes are related in that they are actions that are both trying to clear your breathing system of something that is blocking it. It is an involuntary reaction, almost no one can control. So since if it is so involuntary wouldn’t it make sense that the form or the cavity that the sound comes from (a person’s head, lungs, esophagus, etc.) would determine how it sounds, just like a musical instrument is changed by the same kinds of things? Well, researchers say that that has very little effect on the volume. Just like a musician, we humans somehow control the sound of a sneeze, whether consciously or not, our wills and minds have an effect.
Sneezing is a fast thing, although sometimes you do have to wind up to do it. You know that tickle that you get but you can’t quite sneeze and then after a few of them it suddenly comes out. Sneezing also shoots out all kinds of good stuff at speeds up to 100 miles per hour. That’s too fast to dodge the germs. One other thing: when people sneeze they involuntarily close their eyes. After I found out about this I tried to test to see if I could keep my eyes open during a sneeze. Coincidentally I have not sneezed since I read about it. We’ll check that one next time my allergy comes around.
Memorable sneezers
The research I read also brought to mind some very unusual “sneezers” I have known over the years. The one that stand in my mind the most was my first boss. I worked in a furniture manufacturing plant in the evening during high school and he was always sneezing and loud too (in those days the dust in the factory was heavy all the time because it was pre-OSHA). In fact he was loud about everything, particularly when he yelled at me, which was pretty often. At 15 I was generally a screw up and probably deserved it. But his sneeze always seemed to contain a comment about his day. Most days as he would sneeze he would use words during the sneeze that referred to horse biscuits, but in a more descriptive way. You know the softer more moist kind. Other times when he sneezed he would include someones name in it as he went off, usually someone he was mad at. I was the target of that a few times. He would tighten up and you’d see his face all scrunch up and then the sneeze would come out and “Ahhhh Shawwwww!”
I worked with a woman many years ago that never only sneezed once, but had to do it three times in a row every time she had the tickle. It would go “Achoo…Achooo…Achoooo.” It got longer each time she did it, but it was always three times.
Finally there was a guy I worked with that was a plumber who used to sneeze and sing together. Yep he did love to sing and his sneezes always ended up with some show tune ending. He said he thought that his sneezes were a kind of very short lived trance and that he couldn’t control what came out. He was a character so everything he said all the time had many meanings. I think the sneeze explanations had a number of them.
Show-offs?
So do people use their sneezes to show off? Well if they do, it’s a pretty bad way to do it. Few people like being sneezed on or at. Bad sneezers can be so irritating when you are in a crowd or a quiet room with a lot of people. There’s some research that still needs to be done. When a person sneezes in a room by themselves, is it as loud as it is when others are present? That would be a good measure of vanity.
There was a time when sneezing was considered to be a kind of status. In the 1600s people thought that sneezing stimulated their mind and somehow that morphed into the fact that when someone sneezed at something they were showing they didn’t like it, thought it was dull or unimportant. That is where the saying “That’s not something to sneeze at” came from. I think today that when someone “snorts” at something it means the same thing. Snort and sneeze, sneeze and snort.
There is also a lot of folklore about sneezing. There are beliefs that range from when a person sneezes they sense that someone is thinking about them (once is for nice, two is for naughty) to the idea that when a sneeze is emitted a persons soul leaves their body temporarily. Some cultures believe that babies have a spell over them until they sneeze the first time. Other supernatural phenomenon are associated with sneezing too. Sneezing is one of the most basic human autonomic actions, yet some yahoo always has to have a reason why something like this takes place that is beyond the fact that someone got some dust in their nostrils.
Well it is what it is, despite myths, stories and research. A good sneeze can clear your brain and cloudy the air. It can distract, scare or amuse people. It can have meaning beyond the simple matter of clearing an airway. And it can be a kind of expression. So that’s how I will explain my loud sneezing to my wife. It’s a form of expression. In fact it could be a work of art of some kind. Who knows? I might be the Picasso of mucus membrane expressionism.
Think she will buy it?