SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 – I learned three memorable things in fifth grade.
The first concerned sneezing. Until then, I’d never given sneezing much thought. When I had to sneeze, I sneezed. My sneezes were normal. They didn’t scare the cat or cause my arms to flap. And they didn’t produce improbable sounds—nothing like BZZZZZKK! which is what my grandpa “said” when he sneezed.
I was fascinated, however, by Susan Johansen’s ability to suppress a sneeze. Susan sat at the desk in front of me. She must’ve been allergic to outside air, because whenever Mrs. Hilliard opened the windows, inevitably Susan would have to sneeze. But instead of unleashing against the back of the head of Ricky Siebert, who sat in front of her, she’d tighten up her shoulders, go “ktjch” and shudder—all in successful suppression of a bona fide sneeze. No one noticed—except I, being close enough to witness the subtleties of the whole operation. The “ktjch” part, which especially intrigued me, was barely audible.
One fall day brought an unusual amount of sneeze-inducing particles into the classroom, and Susan went hard at it, suppressing several successive sneezes. Even Steve Henderson, who sat across from me, and whom I’d never heard sneeze, sneezed. Steve, I discovered, was a “free-sneezer”—a little too free, by my standards. His sneeze triggered an odd reflex in his feet, which were several sizes bigger than mine. In synch with his sneeze, both his feet left the floor, then stomped back down with a flat whomp! (Steve was otherwise a cool kid.)
Just then, I myself felt a sneeze coming on . . .
I decided to experiment with Susan’s method of sneeze suppression. I’d never tried before—it’d never occurred to me to do so, but there she’d just ktjched three times in a row, and if you gave it any thought, that was an amazing feat—worthy of emulation. As my own sneeze-to-be built up, I considered Susan’s likely method. The key seemed to be keeping your mouth shut as tightly as possible—and maybe swallowing at the moment the sneeze exploded.
I pressed my lips together and for good measure, clamped them with my thumbs and index fingers. I prepared to swallow. The sneeze gathered steam like a train coming out of a curve and heading full-tilt down the straight-away toward the station platform, where I was standing on the edge. Here it comes, here it comes . . . get ready to swallow . . . here it . . . IS!
The sneeze-train blasted my lips open and my hands off my face—and nearly blew my ears out. I forgot all about the swallowing part. If at that age I’d been familiar with the phrase, “Holy sh___!” I would have yelled it. Instead, “Oh, no!” clattered faintly across the rails as the sneeze train bolted down the tracks. All heads turned my way, and kind Mrs. Hilliard asked, “Are you okay, Eric?”
“Uh huh,” I mumbled. What I wanted to shout was, “I’m never, ever going to do that again!”
Lesson learned.
(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)
© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
