Wednesday 21 May 2008

Bless Me! Grr!

People don't acknowledge me when I sneeze.

I don't think I ever mixed in "bless you" circles until a few years ago, but at a former job in Australia, all my colleagues were obsessive about saying it whenever anyone sneezed. Anyone but me. At first people relentlessly ignored my sneezing, then, as we all got to know each other a bit better, they sort of looked at me questioningly, then later they laughed a bit and asked me what that noise was, and then later they told me that I have the most ridiculous sneeze ever and that I sound like a bird. I think everyone always thought I was desperately trying to smother my sneezes so that no one would realise I was alive or had a pulmonary system, but personally I have never been able to hear any particular difference in how I sneeze and how everyone else does.

Now here I am in a shiny new place where no one knows me and where I don't really share a language with most of the people I spend most of my time with (apart from Reto, obviously), and again it's the stony silence when I sneeze. Everyone else gets a "bless you" equivalent, and I'm just waiting until the day someone feels comfortable enough to snicker.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's sneaky how you say 'a former job in Australia', thereby implying that you had more than one.

rswb said...

Are you trying to say that I never had more than one job at which there were other people who might have said "bless you"?

Anonymous said...

i'm implying it

Anonymous said...

And I like how you are implying that you have had other jobs where there were no other people to talk to. Lighthousekeeper maybe

Anonymous said...

we brought up our children to count their sneezes out loud ('one!' we would say. 'two!' etc.). it avoided the paganistic associations of blessing the devils believed to be in the sneeze, or wherever it comes from, but left them with a life-long aversion to maths.