A sneezeless day
Sternutated on July 27, 2025.
Today, I got through the day without sneezing.
Then, I realized something momentous… something monumental… something of massive magnitude: I have never sneezed on July 27 before. Not once that I could recollect.
But you don’t have to “recollect”! One of my brain-monkeys injected into my synapses. You have a log for this!
Indeed I did. “I don’t have to ‘recollect’—I have a log for this!” I repeated out loud and in a rather monkey-like manner. I dropped what I was doing (which was nothing) and bounded upstairs to my umpteenth-floor bedroom to fetch my nose log from the depths of one of my myriad closets.
The closet in this room was more “drive-through” than “walk-in,” and it was piled with clutter that would make a Collyer brother blush—but that didn’t stop me. A pile of newspapers 9′ high, a pile of socks 18′ high, sixteen tons of National Geographics with the pages stuck together, another heap of women’s shoe catalogs in similar condition, a box of bent paperclips, a box of broken toothpicks, a Lego model of the Large Hardon Collider, a single rubber ducky… I pushed it all out of the way, and—“Did you ever have that dream where you’re walking naked down the street, and everyone just stares?”—there in front of me was the stolid, goat-leather-bound thing I was looking for: My nose log.
Meeping, I withdrew from the clutter maze with my prize in hand and plopped down on the bed in as flamboyant a manner as I could muster with such a weighty tome in my caprine hands. I leafed through the pages eagerly. My extensive nose log, going back to 1986, confirmed my suspicions: Not once in my 157 years on God’s green, hellish Earth, had I sneezed on July 27. Not once. Not even in 2008, the only time July 27 has been a Sunday.
I did insufflate a whole calzone on July 27, 2013. I wondered how much of my body is still comprised of any of those calzone molecules. After twelve years, certainly I’ve become unto that calzone like the Ship of Theseus? Then my mind returned to the task at hand: Sneezing. And my history thereof.
Indeed, not once have I ever sneezed on July 27. And it wasn’t for lack of trying. On July 28, 1987, I sneezed out something resembling a potato—but that was a day late and a couple dollars short. (My log stated I sold the potato for 99¢, a bargain in those days.) On July 26, 1992, I ruptured both eardrums (and three corneas) in a nose-blowing accident, which presumably followed a failed attempt at sternutation.
I also learned I have never sneezed on February 30. But that’s simply because the day hasn’t existed since 1712.
A sudden urge then overcame me. I tried to sneeze. Alas, a booger the size of another potato was lodged up there. I died of sudden massive overpressure and an ensuing cranial explosion. Shit.