Springtime, and the living is stuffed up
Achoo!
Oh, excuse me, as I was writing this editorial about spring allergies I sneezed all over my keyboard.
The ironic thing is, I grew up in Alabama and never had a whisper of allergy symptoms throughout my childhood and teenage years.
I could bathe in pollen and roll around in big piles of hay (not that I did, these are just humorous examples, you see) and not so much as sneeze. Then we moved. While living in Missouri, the symptoms began. The allergies were so unknown to me that I assumed it was just a long, stubborn cold for the first couple of years.
I finally put two and two together when the third springtime rolled around and I got a cold...again. Could this be allergies? I thought. Impossible! I've never been allergic to anything before! But there it was.
It was never so bad as it was in the Midwest when we were in Texas and Florida, but we arrived back in my native Alabama, and boom! Full-blown hay fever. It's like my system forgot it was immune to southern pollen. It's even affecting my poor three-year-old son, who woke up the other morning with his eyes crusted closed.
He ran into our bedroom, crying, "Mommy! I can't see!" And trying to pull his massive eyelashes (if you've seen my son, you know what I'm talking about) apart.
So Connor and I both are doomed to wander through our early spring days in a medicinal haze, toting tissue and OJ wherever we go. It's very inconvenient also that spring tends to be a very busy time, so I have many interviews and other outdoor activities to attend.
I feel it's very rude to blow my nose during an interview or quiet ceremony, but the alternative is a bit more vulgar. Of course, Connor will just slurp it right up without thinking twice, but we are not going to get into the grossness of toddlers in this particular column.
With every customer or story subject I speak to, they say, "Wow! You sound really stuffed up!" Tell be something I dote doe. I am just waiting for my native southern respiratory system to get with the program and remember it was born and raised here, and the spring pollen is not the enemy. Sniff.
