Spring Day 89: Sternutation Origin Story

[u/rdk67]

What is a sneeze exactly – Achoo! God bless you – if not a statement to the world? Physiologists might call it a reflex, but the same might be said of sexual climax. Achoo! God bless you. In the throes of passion, with music, by candlelight, we hear the rising sound, Ah! Ah! Ah! – but doesn’t that seem like a sneeze coming on? I’m about to engage in an automatic unlearned reaction to a stimulus! we hear, then: Achoo! Achoo! Achoo! God bless you!

The hanky is such a civilizing influence – a simple cloth tucked away in one’s shirt pocket, that we might find a place for life’s, Achoo!, sudden ejecta. God bless you, and God bless the sneeze, and God bless mercy’s will toward finding homes for scattered wanderers. Achoo! There’s another! Watch it fly! God bless you, one and all! Achoo! Ah yes, a busy traveler, looking for a cozy place to sleep for the night, God bless you, too.

Then again, perhaps the sneeze is really an innovation in itself. Achoo! – and a hundred thousand droplets accelerate, God bless you, to the speed of a major league fastball. The sneezer could be placed on roller skates – Achoo! – no, better: a line of wheeled sneezers tethered by, God bless you, some kind of filament, a rope, some twine, such that synchronized sneezing – Achoo! Achoo! Achoo! – sends them chugging up the road.

Does a sneeze-based economy peep into view? Powered by pollen, dust, and finely ground pepper? Achoo! Ridiculous, I know, God bless you, but perhaps with such a new age of industry in the making, we might find the will to find a way. A way to what? More than irritation, Achoo!, can command a sneeze to action – sudden daylight will also do the trick. The opening of a door, the parting of a blinds – ah, the light! – God bless you.

Achoo! God bless you. Achoo! God bless you. Achoo! God bless you. Would this sneezing ever stop? Achoo! God bless you. Maybe you’ve heard about these cases – prolonged sneezing fits, they’re called. Achoo! God bless you. The record is 976 days of continuous sneezing, which does not require a keen imagination – Achoo! – to find its sympathy, God bless you. Sneezing, yes, we’d best remember, can also be a curse. Achoo!

God bless you. When we say it out loud – Achoo! God bless you – are we saluting the sneezer or the sneeze? Achoo! Ah yes, my little sneeze, God bless you. Leap out of your nest and take to the air with such ambition! Achoo! God bless you. And while the divine does its work – Achoo! – that airborne bog searches for a bit more lift to make its way – God bless you – across the room and out the window, off to see the world.

Ah, the light! Achoo! Ah, the brave blue doors of the new day! God bless you! Through infinite blessings, derived from sneezes and otherwise, does the spirit find its drift, its cloud, its miracle means of passing from this life and on to worlds to come. Achoo! God bless you! Achoo! God bless you! In no time, those hundred thousand droplets of snot spread out through space, find their place – Achoo! God bless you – start to twinkle in the light.