The men in my family are absolutely cursed with terrible allergies. As a kid, I didn’t know exactly what “sinuses” were, but I knew that my Dad’s did terrible things that made him miserable and cranky. My brother used to get horrible nosebleeds – seemingly out of absolutely nowhere – ruining many a pillow and causing many a scene in public places. Our medicine cabinet was crammed full of allergy medications and our shelves runneth over with emergency boxes of tissues. Despite all this, I made it through unscathed.
So it makes little sense to me that I’ve somehow newly developed seasonal allergies. I’ve heard of folks becoming lactose intolerant as they age, but to gradually become sensitive to ragweed?* Or whatever-the-hell-else floats around the air around me?
I didn’t start noticing it until around 2007 when I moved to Oklahoma. There, I chalked it up to the ferocious wind blowing all kinds of shit around that my nose just wasn’t used to. All of this stuff was there all along, I figured. The wind was just never strong enough to stir it up.
Except I continued to notice it after I moved back to Missouri, where the wind most certainly does not come sweepin’ down the plain (quite the opposite, really; the hot, festering air sits like a stagnant cloud of death upon us. Oh, summer). Thankfully, my allergies are seasonal. I’ve known folks that seem to suffer year-round, ugh.
Despite knowing that this is my new normal, I seem to forget each year until I start sneezing and itching. A few weeks ago, I was convinced that I was coming down with a cold. Except it never seemed to progress past that initial sneezy-watery-gross-phlegmy-general-blah-ness that begin a cold. And damn, did my eyes itch! Maybe I had pinkeye? No, probably typhoid. No, not probably. Definitely. I was definitely coming down with a wicked case of typhoid.** A wicked case of typhoid that mysteriously flares up whenever I go outside.
Ohhhhhhhhhh….
*Ragweed… which sounds like something you should get your money back for, not a potential allergen.
**What the fuck is typhoid, anyway? Is that like typhus? Isn’t typhus a thing? Or is that a name? Hehe. Typhus Andronicus. lolz.
the sloppy copy 