sternutation
\ stur-nyuh-TEY-shuhn \ , noun;
1. the act of sneezing.
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Mike and Sue walked along the sunny forest trail, enjoying
the sights of nature at its finest. At
least, the finest it could ever hope to get in a well traveled state run
park. Their enjoyment was cut short when
they noticed the third member of their party was conspicuously absent. They both agreed to simply stop and wait for
him. They didn’t have to wait long, as a
sudden noise alerted them to the presence of their missing companion.
Derrick
trudged through the trail. His feet
seemed heavy and his thoughts clouded.
His eyes were red and watery, his face was even redder than his eyes,
and he was breathing heavily through his mouth, as his nose was too stuffed to
be usable for the intake of air. As he approached
Mike and Sue, he stopped and entered a furious fit of uncontrolled sneezing.
The sound filled the otherwise peaceful forest, causing a few small songbirds
to flutter away.
“I tink
dere mighd be some pollen in de air.”
Derrick said though his stuffed up nose once he stopped sneezing. As soon as the words left his mouth, his nose
acted up again, and he entered another sneezing fit.
“Can’t
be. It’s too early in the season for
pollen.” Mike said.
“Trus
me, dere’s pollen. Lods of id.” Another round of sneezes filled the air.
“Did
you bring you allergy meds?” Sue asked.
“Uh
huh. Took’em. Didn’d work.”
“How
long ago?”
“An
hour.”
“Huh.” Mike said.
Derrick took some pretty strong allergy medicine, and it usually started
clearing him up in a matter of minutes. “You
sure you took the right pills?”
“Uh
huh.” Derrick said before launching into
more sneezes. Once he quieted down, he
took a deep breath through his nose in an attempt to clear it, if only a
little. All he accomplished was make an
odd sound that was somewhere between a honk and a hiss. “Id was working fine before. Bud now dere’s too much pollen around. I don’ dink I should keep going.”
“Oh
come on.” Mike said. “You’re gonna let a little pollen stand in
your way? We’ve been planning this for
weeks.”
Both
Sue and Derrick looked at Mike blankly.
Well, Sue did anyway. It was a
bit hard for Derrick to look at anything, since he was once again, too busy
sneezing out the pollen that had invaded his nose.
“Seriously,
Mike?” Sue asked. “You really want him
to keep going when he’s like this? If
Derrick keeps going, he’ll sneeze out every drop of water in his body.”
“Oh
come on, it’s not that bad.” Mike looked
at his friend’s condition. “Ok, maybe it is that bad. But still.
We’ve got plenty of water here. I
bet we can flush some of it out.”
“Uh,
ew?” Sue said, clearly disgusted by the
idea of using one of their water bottles to expel large amounts of mucus from
Derrick’s nose. Derrick didn’t seem to thrilled
with the idea either.
“I’ll
jus come back anoder day. Jus make sure
to look ad de pollen forcasd before, kay?”
“Yeah,
sure thing.” Sue said. “Go back and clear yourself up real
good. We’ll make sure to take some good
pictures for you.”
“Uh
huh.”
Derrick
turned to leave the pollen infested forest.
Before he got too far though, Mike called out to him.
“Don’t
go in the car before you’re dried up, ok?
I don’t want your snot all over everything.” Sue glared at him for that. “What?”
Sue just rolled her eyes and kept
walking. The two continued their hike,
doing their best to ignore the sounds of sneezing that filled the forest behind
them.
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I had allergies once. At least, I think I did. It was kind of weird, actually. I didn't get any of the normal stuff. Instead, I just got this weird little half cough thing that was really annoying and made my throat sore after awhile. It lasted for a few years and then just disappeared. It probably wasn't allergies because of that, but I'm not really sure what it was, so that's the best I can do.
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