Ridiculous Opinions #293
It is widely acknowledged that I am the loudest sneezer in the family. I resent this implication because it is patently false. Tracey is the loudest sneezer in the family, but for some reason, she has managed to bamboozle my daughters into the thinking that I am the loudest sneezer in the family. This is unfair, because Tracey, when she sneezes, actually makes a vocal sound, as if she is announcing to the world that she is sneezing. It is only for a split-second before the sneeze, but it is there, nonetheless. That vocal sound, alone, should qualify her as the loudest sneezer.
I wish I wasn’t so bothered by this, but I am. My sneezes are not loud. I mean, they are loud, but they aren’t the loudest. That distinction belongs to Tracey, as I have said. My daughters describe my sneezes as short, sharp bursts, as if a rifle is going off in their ears. I beg to differ. I do not hear rifles going off when I sneeze. I hear a sneeze. It is an unfair characterization and I reject the insinuation.
My family shames me for something that I cannot control. Normally, I enjoy making fun of people for things that people can’t control, like male-pattern baldness or having red hair. Everyone knows that male-pattern baldness is funny and men who have it are less manly than other men. And we all know that red-headed people are funny for a wide variety of reasons, the biggest one stemming from the fact that they have red hair. Haha. It’s the same color as a carrot. (Then again, carrots are orange, as is the hair of red-headed people, which leads me to ponder the notion of why we call people with orange-colored hair, red-headed…but those are questions for the universe, so really, who knows?).
But back to my original subject, which is that my family makes fun of me for things that I can’t control. They shouldn’t shame me like that. It triggers me, and if they’re going to shame me in such a way, they should offer a trigger warning. For instance, when I sneeze and they plan to make a snide comment about my sneeze, they should say, “I just want to warn you, beforehand, that I am about to make fun of your sneeze, and though it is something you can’t control, it is important that you be made fun of for it, because making fun of you elevates my self-esteem while simultaneously lowering yours.”
Then, someone else in the family should say, “I am now warning you that, as soon as this other family member makes fun of the short, sharp burst of your sneeze, I, too, will concur with them, and in doing so, it will enable us to form a sort of alliance against you, which is, and always has been, our ultimate goal as family members.”
You see, our family constantly engages in subtle, psychological power dynamics. This has to do with my training as a Russian agent in the late-nineties, when I was covertly recruited to not only serve as a sleeper agent in American society, but also to serve as a trainer for my own family to be future sleeper agents. I did not know, at the time, that I would someday be a Canadian citizen, but I suspect that my Russian handler would have been pleased, considering he would be getting two countries for the price of one, but I digress…
Part of my training, which, as I said, was as a Russian asset, was to foster competition and ranking amongst our family members. Thus, every interaction we have is based on a hierarchical ranking amongst us, each one striving for a sense of superiority over the others. Every interaction we have throughout the day is ranked on a scale of 1-10, with the highest ranking person at the end of the day being the winner, and thus receiving a trophy that they will place under their pillow when they sleep that night. The trophy is a recreation of Trotsky in bronze.
This competition amongst us has led to several feuds. We regularly argue about who knows more arcane knowledge about East German philosophers (with Harper usually winning, considering her advanced degree in Communist history), or about who can make advanced listening devices with the smallest number of parts (Tracey is the hands-down winner on that one). On Saturdays, we have competitions where we see who can scale walls or sheer rock faces as quickly as possible, but without equipment. Abbey has always triumphed in that arena.
But again, this is how we bond as family members. Another one of those would be the competition for the loudest sneeze. But it’s not a competition for the loudest sneeze, as much as it is a competition for who can sneeze the softest. I tell my family, “You never know when you will be hiding in the rafters of some kind of intelligence agency or waiting to murder a double-agent in a closet and you have to sneeze. The volume of that sneeze is the difference between life and death!”
As a side note, I have not been in contact with my handler from Russia since the late-nineties, so I am waiting to see when I have to activate as an agent. I suspect he might be dead…
