While recently vacationing in Italy, I toured a small farm outside Montserrat (sp?) that makes cheese wine and olive oil. A group of a couple dozen mostly American tourists, including myself and my SO were watching an Italian woman show us how cheese is made.
I felt a sneeze coming on.
Normally, this isn’t a problem. I can stifle a sneeze easily, and make no sound at all. However, this time something went wrong. A small amount of air somehow made it out of my face and this very loud, sharp squeek came out with it. I’ve truly never made a sound like that before. It was loud as hell and had a very unique sound.
Everybody looked at me like I was dying or something. One boorish woman actually spoke right out at me: “What was that?” she squacked. Feeling slightly embarrassed and a bit annoyed I responded to the whole group “I tried to suppress a sneeze. I failed.” Then I turned back to look at the cheese maker as if to say, “Let’s get back to why we’re here.”
Warning re: sneezing while driving. My youngest sister sneezed while driving a couple of years ago and ended up upside down in the ditch. Not injured, but her almost-new car was totalled.
I had a ginormous sneeze at the end of a job interview, and it launched i nice big juicly phlegmball into my right hand.
Of course you’re supposed to shake hands at the end of the interview, and sure enough, he suck his hand out. The quick wipe on the pants didn’t do real well, and I’m pretty positive that there was some transfer.
I didn’t get the job, but I was called back for a second interview.
I was sick in first grade and got nose bleeds every day just sitting. It’s not pretty when you sneeze, thats for sure. The blood can hit the opposite wall. I always had a nose bleed from sneezing until I hit my 30’s. I learned to open my mouth when I sneeze. It’s a very weird noise.
It’s bad to sneeze when you removing chaf from small seeds on a cookie sheet.
I also had to use metrilogic equipment, that I had to hold my breath to get a reading. You had to replace components that cost a couple hundred dollars, if you sneezed at the wrong time.
While doing a video shoot. If we’ve got a narrator who has to read a full page of text, and there’s no opportunity to go to B-roll, he’s got to get the whole thing just perfect. If he stumbles on the last word, we’ve got to go back and get the whole thing again. Usually takes for-f__king-ever to get it right.
So we all hold our breaths while doing a take. Sneezing at the end of an otherwise perfect take is an excellent way to have a full video crew, a director, and a very pissed-off narrator slowly bludgeoning you to death with a teleprompter.
I almost always sneeze when I get turned on, just at the beginning (I think I inhale sharply through my nose, which sucks in a dust bunny or something, which triggers the sneeze). There’s nothing like doing… whatever it is that turns you on, trying to be all sexy about it, and having to pause for a sexond so that you can ACHOO! in the least attractive way possible. And with all you stomach muscles visible- eew.
Many years ago while Christmas shopping at a Gap store, I was standing in line waiting to pay for a pair of jeans. A snobby woman who had been complaining about the potential wait (no doubt hoping someone would let her cut in line) decided she had waited long enough, set down a few items she had and cut through the line between me and the guy behind me. Just at that time I felt a sneeze coming on and with my hands full, all I could do was turn my head and let fly. Besides the usually bit of spray, a bit of throat slime came flying out and hit the woman in the back of her leather jacket. While she worked her way out of the crowded store, the slime started sliding down her back. From the back of the line I heard someone call out “Good shot”. I didn’t see the woman the rest of my shopping trip to the mall, I don’t know if I would have said something if I did.
George Carlin (an expert if you asked me) says it can’t be done. That your brain sends a message that says “STOP PISSING, WE’RE GOING TO SNEEZE NOW”. “Cause your brain knows…you might blow your asshole out!”