Weekend obs (M)

[atchoum]

A couple of observations (both M) from a weekend spent with a couple of friends in Lower Burgundy.

The first observation was in a motorway restaurant on the way to the county. We had left early and had stopped about 8 am to have a spot of breakfast. We were almost going to have just a coffee at a stand-up café when one of the friends said he was hungry and we decided to go into the self serve restaurant part, so we were just coming in when two loud male sneezes were heard – not shouted, just unstoppable. I looked around to see who it could be, and the restaurant looked empty. After a few seconds I saw a waiter/cashier at the end of the counter and thought it might be him, but there was then a third sneeze coming from the other side of a screen dividing the counter from the restaurant proper. I can be an advantage to be tall sometimes, and I looked over in time to see the fourth sneeze. It was from a man having breakfast with his family – a wife in her twenties, three young children, none of them reacting at all to the sneezes. The man seemed to be in his late thirties – probably had been well built but running a bit to fat – very short blond hair, quite tall, wearing a white T shirt. I was so engrossed in this discoveries and the hope there would be more sneezes when I realised I had not taken cutlery etc for breakfast, so I had to go back to the beginning of the queue, and there I started to lose track of the sneezes. Eventually there was a vigorous nose blow and the sneezes seemed to stop, but by the time I got back to my observation point over the screen, the man was open mouthed with half a dozen paper serviettes in his hand, waiting for a sneeze, which came as I looked – damped by the paper serviettes, but not really stifled. There were another couple of these while we paid, but I made sure we took a table with a good view of the sneezer. By the time we settled down, he had got rid of the serviettes (dont know where) and he seemed to be listening to his wife. He sneezed once again, without trying to stifle at all, and a couple of minutes later a final sneeze (I imagine the twelfth or thirteenth, though I had lost count) – the two last ones rather less violent than the first. I have no idea what brought this on – the pollen count has been zero for months – he did not seem to have a cold, because I had my eye on him for a quarter of an hour after that, but not a sniffle was to be heard. Could it be his normal sneeze routine ? The complete absence of reaction from his family led me to think so.

The only other observation was from our friend, one of the best photic sneezers I know, - I have described his sneezes here and on sneezing males4males before (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sneezingmales4males/message/1759)

Over the two days we were away, I saw him sneeze 9 times. Only one time was the sneeze not caused by the sun (that’s about his average, I would say – 8 photic sneezes to 1 non photic). Of the others, all were singles, except the last – it started off as a single, but a minute or so later there were three smaller sneezes in fairly quick succession. He seems to go through phases of sneezing in singles or doubles – last time we spent a weekend together they were all doubles.

His sneezes are always high pitched and one syllable – a vigorous “CHEWWW !” with a violent jerk forward.