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I have what amounts to an allergy hang over. My friends that drink tell me that the symptoms are surprisingly similar. Headache, body aches, sensitivity to light, sore muscles, and just an overall grumpy not feeling so well. Spring has sprung and the pollen is attacking my immune system like a well organized army, or at least a persistent one. Damn trees having sex, stop getting your pollen all over me! That sounds like something you’d protest at a bad night at a really bad club. Worst thing I ever gotten on me for real was wax from a novice performer that got overzealous and missed most of her partner and got the audience. You ever try to get wax off of silk? Another reason not to sit right next to the stage.
One of the ironies of the allergy hangover is that I don’t get hangovers from drinking. All right, in my limited experience I don’t. The one and only time I got drunk enough to truly be drunk was on vodka and orange juice; screwdrivers. Somewhere around the sixth or seventh tall glass there was precious little orange juice in them. I slurred my words, and things that weren’t funny were very funny at the time. The next morning, my friend who had joined me had classic hang over symptoms. I woke up bright eyed and bushy-tailed, cheerful and no worse for wear. She hated me that day. She, of course, continued to be a drinker for years to come, and suffered numerous hangovers. I who did not get hangovers and could have drunk without that penalty, just didn’t like it that well. Proof that the universe is both ironic and unfair.
More irony; two of my male friends that are straight and one of female friends that is gay all have absolutely no gag reflex. Now how unfair is that? The rest of us that could use this talent must struggle on, and learn to work around our deficiencies.
But as I sit here nursing my first hot cup of tea of the morning, and trying to fight off the headache that is trying to take off the back of my skull and neck, I think about the fact that my drinking friend has absolutely no allergies at all. Maybe, in the end the universe is fair, after all.
Now, if I could just figure out a polite way to ask my three friends with no gag reflex what little misery they’ve got instead, I’d really know if the universe was fair. But some questions are not meant to be asked even between close friends. Not unless liquor is involved, and alas, I do not drink.