Stalactites hanging from your nose. You’re wheezing and gasping for air. Yes, it is time for the yellow scourge. The pollen plague. The allergy attack.
Your eyes are red from weed — ragweed.
You eat Claritin, Allegra, Sudafed (if you bootleg it in from Texarkana in your Trans Am) and Benadryl like Tic Tacs. You take local honey enemas, stick a car wash hose up your nose and you still can’t get relief. If you saw the Lorax walking down the street, you’d slap him. There’ll be no tree hugging for you. You want to cut all the green monsters down. The Giving Tree is giving you hell.
Yup, plants have put on some Barry White and are getting romantical. You just wish they’d get a room.
It’s pollen season — which would be more accurately called “human season” because the trees are trying to kill us. If you are among the chosen few who suffer seasonal allergies, you feel the pain. In fact, you’re crying right now in agreement. Not because you’re sad. No, it’s because you feel like you have poison ivy in your eyes. And you just want to croak. Or at least be wearing a moon suit so you could breathe. But you can’t read this. Your eyes are crusted shut.
Here in Mississippi, we’re surrounded by acres of green, lush beauty. And for a month out of the year, it tries to kill us. Our cars are yellow. Our dogs are yellow. Our homes are yellow. Our noses are yellow. And our eyes are red. You have to shovel the pollen off your sidewalk.
It’s the yellow blizzard.
And It’s nothing to sneeze at.
Actually it is.