SNEEZING YOUR BRAINS OUT

You would think after more than 30 years of marriage that Rick could do nothing that would surprise me anymore. Think again.

I suppose, considering there are so many bodily functions that could be humiliating when paraded out in public, I should be grateful that the one Rick chose to exhibit the other day was one of the least embarrassing—that would be the sneeze.

To say that Rick is a loud sneezer would be a gross understatement. His sneezes have a power behind them that anything not battened down actually reverberates. In fact the normal human body cannot withstand the battering.

My son Garret is the perfect example. Rick passed his technique on to him. However, the strain on Garrets strong and healthy body is so great that when he sneezes his body actually folds over double. He looks like he is initiating a low bow to royalty. Rick likes to think he is bowing to his father’s sneezing superiority.

The unleashing of this power proved to be dangerous to Garret. One day as the dreaded sneeze tore through his body he happened to be walking towards our granite island and he was in the throws of his bow when his head smacked onto the counter.
That is what I call sneezing your brains out. I cannot afford to sneeze my brains out, so I have developed a normal polite, socially acceptable sneeze.

The other day we were driving down the road in our beater truck. It has no air conditioning so the windows were open. Normally my husband is very proper in public so I am not usually afraid to be seen with him.

However unprepared I am for these eruptions that rip through his body, send chills up my spine and paralyze my heart, the average person, strolling innocently down the street is totally ill-equipped.
We had just pulled into Greg’s Gardens when Rick let loose the sneeze of the century. Even I haven’t experienced on of this magnitude. I am sure it measured on the Richter scale.

To make matters worse he had a mouth full of cherry pits. This sneeze was so loud it actually came in two parts. The first eruption came just as I had stepped from the truck and had my hand on the door to shut it. People froze. It’s hard to do anything else when your heart stops. Just when we all thought it was safe to breathe again the second explosion came in a rain of cherry pits. Everyone looked up to the roof to see if the shingles had been shaken loose and were falling on them.

No one but me knew where it came from. Rick was laughing, people were fleeing and I had to restart my heart by beating on my chest and walk into the store as though nothing happened. I am a rock.