Excuse Me, I Have Allergies

"Aaaaa-choo!" my nose announced, one beautiful blue October day.

The woman next to me gave me a look as a snuffled in order to keep snot from cascading down my face.  She edged away a little bit, in an automatic "keep away from the sick girl" manuever.

"Excuse me," I apologized, "I have allergies."

It is a little embarassing sometimes, being burdened with the sniffles each fall.  It certainly isn't sexy, blowing my nose on cocktail napkins.  And sneezing on people won't make you an friends.  

There is also the fact that, for a week or two before Halloween, I cannot breathe out of my nose.  I am aesthetically opposed to mouth-breathing - it just looks so sloppy - but I obviously have to breathe somehow.  So I become a mouth breather, and suffer the consequences of self-judgement.

I don't know how many people in the world are plagued with seasonal allergies, but I know that I do run into quite a few snifflers among my friends and family.  Allergies are so unfair.  You cannot control whether you get them, there's little you can do to stop their effects, and they make you feel icky and sick but you can't take time off work for them.  Where's the justice?

And where do these allergies come from anyway?  Why do I get a runny nose during the fall - shouldn't my nose be used to it by now?  I've experienced over two decades worth of falls, and still no improvement.  It's like, every October my nose sniffs the fresh crisp air and says "what is this?  I'm freakin' out man!"  Then procedes to produce unholy amounts of mucus.

I did a bit of research, and discovered that an allergy is a hypersensitivity of the immune system.  It's like my immune system is some emotional prima donna, demanding that all those tiny clusters of pollen apologize for being so rude.

Allergies got their name in the early 1900's.  Now I, personally, am not clear about whether this was when allergies were discovered, or when they began to exist.  You see, before this industrial age that enabled all of us to fiddle around on our computers and eat microwaved yummies, way more people lived in the country.  And apparently, according to a National Geographic article, chances of a country kid developing allergies are much lower than those of a city kid, because they were exposed to allergens from the beginning.

So maybe that's the problem - maybe all children should be raised on farms and then brought to live and work as adults in the city.  But then wouldn't they be allergic to things like asphalt and exhaust?

Clearly, this is a topic that could use more scientific research - give us a cure, good scientists! I will not be the person to do that, though, because I have to go get a tissue before I snot all over the screen.