Good Morning, Malady

Last week it was evident that my least favorite time of year was in full swing. Spring usually typifies growth, birth, life after death and renewal. You know, happy fun stuff. But after having to categorize my sneezes on the Fujita scale, enough was enough. Every year since my early 20s, I’ve accepted that I’ll have to endure two solid months of upper-respiratory hell. And yet, I always seem to get caught off guard by Mother Nature’s coup de main. It’s as if I wake up one morning mysteriously transported to the dankest, dustiest house imaginable.

So I suffer from hay fever, aka allergic rhinitis. It’s not the end of the world. Believe me, I’d rather take a temporary hit to liveliness than have to tolerate a chronically spastic colon. But still, the torment seems disproportionate when considering nature’s harassing agent: pollen. Recalling my 5th grade science class, what exactly is pollen again? The male gametes of plants. That’s right. What a comforting thought that for two months, I get the privilege of lining my sinuses with flora’s man-seed. It’s nice to know that even in nature males fail to exercise sexual discretion or restraint. Way to go, nature. Thanks for perpetuating stereotypes and retarding steps toward gender equality.

Daddy, when did you and Mommy decide to have a baby?

Well son, when a man reaches a certain age, he realizes that he loves someone. And the most responsible thing he can do is to encase his sperm in cellulose and disperse it to wherever the wind may blow. It just so happened that Mommy happened to be a few miles north, and even though we’d never met, we had something special the moment my pollen landed on her pistil. Yes, your germination was an act of indiscretion, but the important thing to remember is that Mommy and Daddy loved each other.

Apparently a perk of joining the pollen platoon is a cosmetic overhaul of your face. We’ll call it Extreme Makeover: Assface Edition. Benefactors will receive allergic shiners and edema of the eyes. Google it. It’s just as pleasant as it sounds. Both of which render yours truly as a younger but equally haggard sibling of Emperor Palpatine. As tempting as the dark side was, the Sith reneged on the promise of Force Lightning. I’m still bitter about it. Then there's the curious phenomenon of an itchy nasal cavity and throat, a sensation I'm sure I could only replicate by snorting a line of Pop Rocks. It's an impossible itch to scratch and after several unsuccessful and obnoxious snorts, I've seriously considered recruiting the Scrubbing Bubbles to do the job.

There seems to be no medical consensus on what prescription to use when your eyes adopt the texture of congealed pudding. Having moved several times, every doctor I’ve seen has prescribed something different. The least favorite of which were milky white eye drops, and they tasted disgusting. How do I know how they taste, you ask? Because I was unwillingly educated in how the lachrymal ducts drain into the sinus cavity. All those years of watching Ripley’s freaks shoot milk from their eyes finally made sense.

Whether Zyrtec, Claritin-D or even your first generation anti-histamines like Benedryl (aka elephant tranquilizers), allergy medication is damage control at best. But some insist that taking bee pollen or honey from local hives can eventually result in long-term tolerance to the nuisance. Really? Let’s see what happens when we apply that logic to rattlesnake venom. Such a suggestion also demonstrates the scholastic ineptitude of pollen enthusiasts. They’d have to explain why bees have suddenly traded their interest in brightly colored, fragrant plants for that in ragweed, trees and various grasses. That is to say, insect-pollinated plants are not the problem, so honey derived from which could not effectively “cure” you of your allergies.

Electron microscope renderings actually shed light on pollen's abrasive personality. Is it a ball with countless, pointy barbs that hook into the lining of your sinuses? Or is it a miniature version of the new breed of "toys" that now fill the crane vending machines at the local mall? Whatever the case, I find them both irritating to the core.