God Bless You

There was a time, centuries, mayhap millennial ago, when the poor ignorant folk of the world either cringed in fear or threw their weary arms to the heavens when they witnessed what they believed were Godly events.

 It would take all those centuries, all those millennial, for those poor folk to realize that some of those events, most, all of those events, were Godly only to the extent that they were set in motion by some Godly entity. 

The eventual realization that these events followed a predictable, repeatable pattern led to a method of observing the environment that depended more on science than on either superstition or faith.

One can understand then, how the unexpected tilting back of the head, the sudden snapping of the head forward, and the resultant explosion that spewed the inner body outward, might have seemed like the expulsion of demons from the body.  

One can imagine how that might have seemed like a job well done, a Godly event nearly concluded. 

    

One can imagine then that the event could truly be concluded only by recognizing that now that the demons had been expelled, the body could now be properly blessed.

God Bless You.

But since we now know how various, concerted muscle contractions cause the expulsion of irritants from the body in the form of a sneeze, and that it is Godly only to the extent that it is a natural bodily function programmed into the body by that same mysterious entity, there is really no longer any need that the event be concluded with an obligatory “God Bless You.”

Unless, of course, that same blessing is available for other natural bodily functions; the hic cup, the cough, and best of all, the fart.

Memory

Every year I have to remind myself that I have allergies. Or maybe it’s a single allergy, I don’t really know. All I know for certain is that every April my nose starts to itch, my throat gets a little scratchy, and my eyes water like a leaky kitchen faucet.

My wife tells me every year that I should see someone about it; a doctor, obviously, someone to poke me with pins until my skin blisters, and he says, “That’s it then. I’d stay away from pinecones, cat dander, and bad jokes. That last one was just a joke. Ha!”

Bad jokes aside I would take my wife up on her offer except that by the time my allergies becomes an issue they are already becoming a non issue. The season is over, for me, not long after it begins. My symptoms disappear like a drop of water on a hot stove.

Maybe they’re not allergies, I tell myself. Maybe I’m experiencing a kind of sympathy pain for the truly afflicted, the way a mother might do for a sick child. Except that I’m not like that. I don’t have that kind of symbiotic relationship with the world at large. What I do have, however, is a bad memory;  not like a sieve, as my mother used to say, but like an unstoppered drain, the old fashioned kind, with the rubber plug attached to a silver chain. Pull the plug and the water flows directly down the drain.

My memory is like that, never collecting like water in a sink, but spilling out of me through watery eyes and a runny nose.