We need to make one thing perfectly clear here. I don't have allergies.
Whatever the coughing, eye-watering, sneezing thing I've got going on, it's not allergies. It's a cold I get every spring and every fall that lasts for about a month while everything blooms or dies and falls off the trees and, coincidentally seems to occur at the same time other people are suffering allergy attacks.
But I don't have allergies. Stupid allergies.
My wife and kids, they have allergies. My co-workers, they have allergies. The person next to me in the line at the pharmacy, he has allergies. Every single solitary person in Northwest Arkansas and many of the dogs and cats have allergies. I can tell by the coughing, eye-watering and sneezing thing they've got going.
Me? I've got a cold.
I know this because, if it's not a cold I get as regularly as moon phases twice every year in the spring and fall when everyone else is having allergy attacks, then I'm suddenly one of those people with allergies.
And that can't possibly happen, because I don't have allergies. Stupid allergies.
You see, I was raised in what we ruefully refer to as a "simpler" time. You know, a time so simple we didn't have to be nice to people who were adversely affected by seasonal changes in pollen counts and such. Or were in any way different from us.
Back then, in those "simpler" times, kids with allergies and inhalers and runny eyes were the first ones nailed in Dodge Ball. And all that that implies. This, of course, was before we knew we needed to be a little more tolerant of those who suffered from things beyond their control.
And before many of those people grew up, invented cool things we can't live without and now spend their time heli-skiing in the Caucasians and buying islands in the Caribbean.
But I wasn't like them, because I don't have allergies. Stupid allergies.
And if I have allergies, then I would regularly have to take all the pills that the people around me -- the people with allergies -- do. You know, the pills that, basically, turn them into drooling zombies at staff meetings. Which, at least gives them an excuse the 57-slide PowerPoint doesn't.
Me, I just take those pills as a precaution. Any drooling and zombiefication is purely accidental. And a reminder of college. But I digress.
And I don't have allergies. Stupid allergies.
I also don't have to take the shot they give you when every over-the-counter remedy known to man, taken individually or all together, has about as much of an impact on the aforementioned "coughing, eye-watering, sneezing thing" thing as the Titanic had on that iceberg.
Actually, I do it because I like to eat a refrigerator's worth of food in one sitting, then wake at three in the morning and decide I need to clean the garage because I definitely can't sleep.
I do this because, well, I really didn't want to be able to compete in the next Olympics anyway. Not because I have allergies. Stupid allergies.
However, as hard as it may be to believe, if I were to have allergies (which, I think we've determined, I don't ), there would be one good thing about them.
Seems I was watching the movie "About Time" the other day. Not sure if you're familiar with it, but an important plot point is that the main character and all the men of his family have the ability to travel in time.
That works out great for him, since he can go back to visit with his beloved father, who has passed away. However, one of the plot contrivances dictates that, eventually, he can't keep doing the time travel deal and both of them know it.
So he goes one last time and he and his dad spend one last day together at the beach, skipping stones and laughing in the surf. And as the end of the day, as they walk back, knowing it will be for the last time, the father says, "that should do it."
And that's when the hay fever hit and my eyes started to water and I had to go get a pill and some tissue and something to drink because my throat is scratchy and, obviously I had to leave the room and no, I wasn't crying because I don't cry at movies, even if they are about beloved fathers and sons and loss and legacy and all that. It was the allergies.
Stupid allergies.
Gary Smith is a recovering journalist living in Rogers.
Commentary on 05/22/2015