flying snot

Lately I have been hating everything I write on this blog. I post something and immediately have to fight to urge to take it down. Everything I write makes me feel like a snob, an asshole, a whiner, or a generally boring person. I would quit entirely, were it not for the fact that I have been through these phases of self-loathing before and I know that capitulating to them leads to dark places where I am afraid to say anything to anyone whose opinion I value for fear of seeming mean or stupid or wrong.

So, in the interest of pushing myself radically away from injurious self-consciousness, a story:

I was doing really well with this allergy season. Normally I am a swollen-faced snot rocket from April to June, and then again from August to November, but last month, drippy and miserable, I overcame my fear of needles in the face and asked the guy I occasionally visit for acupuncture to treat me for allergies. While I can heartily recommend this treatment to others based on the results, I add this caveat: First make sure you trust your acupuncturist with your life. Otherwise you will find yourself physically unable to submit to this procedure. I do trust my acupuncturist, but even so I had to fight a powerful instinctual urge to slide off the table and flee out of his front door. “Close your eyes,” he said. “I know this is unpleasant.” It was, and it was also worth it. For five weeks, I needed nary a Kleenex, let alone a Claritin. Even when the news reported a high pollen count, I was fine.

But this weekend, I noticed that the treatment was starting to wear off. Either that or the pollen count got higher than even my chi-flushed sinuses could manage. I’m okay today, but on Saturday and Sunday I was sniffling and sneezing a la usual.

Even when allergies make you look and feel as sick as a cold would, you have to go on with everyday life. I wish they would design a T-shirt for such days, something that said in large print, “IT’S JUST ALLERGIES. I’M NOT CONTAGIOUS. PLEASE IGNORE MY SNOT.”

I could have used that T-shirt yesterday. We were going to stay home all day and garden, but after turning over our entire backyard tomato plot with a shovel (ok, Eric did that part—it would have taken me days), we noted that the soil was pretty nitrogenous and messy, due to poor drainage, recent torrential rain, and my habit of making slightly goopy compost. Since we needed to go out anyway to take in recycling, we stopped by the garden center and picked up a bag of gypsum to dry things up a bit. As I was paying for the bag, reaching into my wallet for some cash, I mentioned to the cashier that I could give him four pennies, and as I spoke, to my horror, a drop of snot flew out of my nose and hit my right hand.

What does one do in such a situation? One option is to play through and act as though nothing has happened. This runs the risk of making you seem like the sort of person who sprays snot at strangers willy-nilly, oblivious to the inappropriateness, like those foul creatures who pick their noses and cough without covering their mouths in buses and subway cars. On the plus side, it minimizes further personal interaction with the person who has just seen you drip the snot, which carries a powerful appeal in and of itself.

There is also the humor option, which I considered for less than a nanosecond. One might remark, jovially, “Oh, dear me, please don’t mind my excretions. I just got back from a tour of pig farms in Mexico, and I must have picked up a bug.” Funny!

The last option, the one I chose, is to mutter “Excuse me,” then to use one’s left hand, the non-snotted one, to pass the cashier the four pennies and several bills, bills that are, according the New York Times, the perfect carriers for flu viruses, which can survive in mucus plastered to legal tender for over a week. Having given the cashier evidence that I am the sort of person who probably sprays my legal tender with mucus on a regular basis, I immediately regretted not using my credit card.

I am not overly paranoid about such things, but if I had been that cashier, I would have immediately disinfected my work surface, ran to the restroom and washed my hands in the hottest water I could stand for at least a minute, then fretted for the rest of the afternoon about what I might have inhaled.

I will now post this and see how many seconds pass before I regret it. And I might go get some more acupuncture.