On Sneezing
A sneeze might be one of the most strange functions of the human body. It is just a reaction to a sensory input on the insides of your nose. Unlike a sweat, which would help cool the body down, a cough that would remove phlegms from your lungs, sneeze has no other function other than responding to the irritation. Every other process can be controlled and done in private if necessary but you cannot control a sneeze without your face contorting into an expression signalling disgust and pain. It can happen at any time in a human body without a clear hint of what caused it.
Even more strange is the acceptable human response to sneeze: to apologise for it without a pinch of sincerity in the apology, or to move on from it as if nothing happened, or do both. The ‘Sorry’ slips out of the lips like a follow up to the sneeze, as if inherently a part of the sneeze. It wouldn’t be surprising if in a few thousand years, humans evolve to physically utter ‘sorry’ every time they sneeze. The apology is said in a low voice, with the same breath of air that accompanied the sneeze, before taking a fresh breath of air in, because of which it’s barely heard by anyone in the room, but if the sneeze gods, who maintain a record of every time you didn’t say ‘sorry’ after sneezing were to meet you in the afterlife, this action would impress them and keep you in their good books.
The reaction of those around a person who just sneezed is not at all surprising if you believe in the sneeze gods. A ‘ Bless you’ thrown in to remind the person who has just sneezed, and moved on from the fact that they did, that they have interrupted the flow of whatever was taking place before they sneezed and it’s time to acknowledge that. If you think about it, a ‘bless you’ just adds to the disruption. It is an attempt to create a disruption for the receiver while the sneezer collects themselves and gets back to whatever it is that the group was doing. Surprisingly, this is exactly how older microprocessors that made up small, less powerful machines behaved. In a circuit when there was an interrupt in one of the chips, then the others would respond by sending an acknowledgment packet of the interrupt to every other component connected to the chip so that they could delay by the required amount of machine cycles before resuming the normal function it was doing before the interrupt. Just like a ‘Bless you’. The machines, however, evolved to faster, more efficient methods with time, unlike humans.
The sneeze, unlike a cough which would just turn the mouth into an ‘o’, requires you to prepare the face for it to arrive. The face will first be forced to take in a small quantity of air through the mouth, not filling the lungs fully but still giving the feeling that no more air can be pulled in. The victims entire frame shifts up a little. The nose is pinched up as if trying to prevent a spectacle of loose fit from sliding down. A large part of the chin is revealed as the mouth moves closer to the tip of the nose, shaping itself into a trapezoid. The eyebrows, lines forming the eye lashes, two more lines running to the left and right of the nose all point towards one point on the forehead, just above the nose bridge. The head tilts back slightly, ready to force the air out in one swift motion.
But there is no guarantee that the sneeze would come out just because you followed every step of the ritual, religiously twisting every muscle. You might even take a few extra short breaths, hoping the sneeze happens before your lungs are forced to exhale. In that sense, Sneeze is like a celebrity that would announce its arrival, expect the crew to gather a crowd, ready the red carpet, check the decorations but whether it comes or not is totally up to it. The celebrity can cancel it whenever they want to and the crew would have no choice but to pack everything up and go back home. But just when they are done packing, the celebrity’s manager might inform them of a change of plans and the crew would have to set everything up again in half the time that it originally took to make the arrangements. In fact, in case of a sneeze fit, every sneeze that follows the main sneeze would expect the same treatment. Sneeze and then reset everything back to original for the next sneeze to come. Sneezes are like actors in that way. Their main job lacks meaning but they make up for it by creating a fake sense of importance around it.
