the year is full of seasons, both natural & synthetic. the artificial seasons are even more plentiful than the natural ones: the holiday season, tourist season, duck season, cajun seasonin'. but as numerous as the manmade seasons are, they just don't have the the sheer awesome power of the native earthborn seasons. yes, the force of the natural seasons is mighty, and recently i've fallen victim to the worst of the seasons, that dreadful, deadly, dreary time known as allergy season.

some time in the last week there was an explosion in the nasty-things-that-make-me-sneeze population. not that sneezing is the most of my worries; i rarely sneeze even during these times of torture. it's the chain reaction caused by the nasty things' return that bothers me. once my histamines spot those guys, they go on a rampage, running down to the phlegm factory & switching it on overdrive. then my nose floods for a couple months & i get these catches in my throat which cause coughing fits hard enough to make my eyes glaze over every time.

actually it hasn't been as bad the past couple days, but only because i'm on a strict regiment of little white pills. i'm dependent on over-the-counter medicine to allow me to function during these periods. things were touch & go for a couple days before the drugs really started to kick in.

you probably think i'm exaggerating, but honestly i'm not. when allergy season creeps around (or i should say seeps in, as that more accurately describes the behavior of the lurking spores that infect my system) nobody believes right away that it's just allergies. when people hear the deep sonorous bronchial yodel of my trademarked coughing fits, they tend to remark, "that doesn't sound like allergies." there was even a running argument between me & one of my exes that i had some horrible illness that she was going to catch. sorry, but no. it might sound like a fatal lung infection, but i've lived in this body long enough to know: it's allergies.

i think my allergies are the lightest of the family's, too, just like i have the best eyes (i got to wait until 3rd grade to get glasses!). i'm not positive about that, since dad's allergies aren't truly intense like mom's, but i get the feeling i lucked out comparatively. that's pretty frightening, considering what i go through. but it could be worse.

allergies are a pretty dumb thing for our species to evolve. to think, we could've developed chameleon skin or radar ears, but instead of fancy defense mechanisms we got a weakness, the vulnerability to common airborne particles. & why be allergic to such common particles, anyway? why couldn't we be allergic to, say, the scent of our predators, so that whenever they come near we sneeze, warning us of danger?

oh well. this is a problem i can't solve. i can't recode my entire genetic matrix. at least i'm not allergic to antibiotics or housepets or lubricated condoms (i know people allergic to all of those). i'm just allergic to... air. or something in the air. maybe i should go to an allergist someday.