Tabasco In My Nasal Passages

Oh, something terrible happened to me about five minutes ago, maybe seven or eight minutes ago.

I was sitting here at the computer eating some pork chops in my normal way, with lots of Tabasco sauce. I was down to the last bite and then proceeding to drink the puddle that remains on the plate (I also had some fresh tomatoes), the puddle being the mixture of dripped off Tabasco sauce, tomato juice, salt and pepper, and some red peppers I sprinkled on originally.

It's quite delicious, and I think it's something of a curative to anything that might ail you. If it's not, please don't tell me. One thing I know is this is what I eat and I'm hardly ever sick.

Anyway, the terrible thing that happened. I was tipping the plate up to drink the Tabasco puddle, when I felt a sneeze come on all of a sudden -- probably from the pepper -- I tried to stifle it, the puddle somehow got in the way, I sneezed a half sneeze, Tabasco sauce went up my nostrils either from the front or the back, I don't know which. It was a very tumultuous few seconds.

All I know is that somehow it got up there. I started sweating, my nostrils were blazing hot, my eyes were running. My entire head was red. I was up and running for the bathroom, not knowing exactly what to do. The dog was underfoot and consternated because she knew something was wrong with me.

I couldn't blow my nose in the normal way. Nothing would happen. I'm trying to figure out how to get water in my nostrils without it running down the wrong hole into my lungs and drowning me. I can't do that. I'm thinking about gargling, then diverting it up the nasal passage, but nothing is coming to me as to the right method.

So I keep blowing my nose on the wash cloth. I can't get a proper hank of toilet paper. I'm in misery this whole time.

But I did go and grab a camera to take a few pictures of myself, since I looked like a big sweating, miserable tomato with runny eyes. But since I don't put pictures of myself on my blog, I can't show them to you. Just let me say, I looked terrible.

This all occurred when I was writing a post about Henry Gibson. Between the last two paragraphs is where it happened. But after I got rid of the worst of it and could blow my nose, I wrote the last paragraph there. So that's weird because I was of two entirely different minds during each of those paragraphs. Pre-sneeze and post-sneeze. It was a Jack Ruby moment, completely unexpected and disruptive.

Now that I've written this whole thing ... in that time I'm getting back to normal. I just feel a slightly present hot buzz in my nostrils. And my nose is running.