Today I did something that no human has ever done before...something no human will ever do again.
I double sneezed.
That’s right ladies and gentlemen I DOUBLE sneezed.
It was not one of those sneezes that creeps up on you and springs itself on you. No no. I was sitting on the train minding my own business then before I could even blink I was HALFWAY THROUGH a violent sneeze. And that folks, is where the plot thickens. At exactly the halfway point when you’ve already sharply taken in breath in the ‘ah’ and you’re hovering somewhere on the edge of the ‘choo’, your lips involuntarily hanging loose and your chin thrust forward YET ANOTHER sneeze caught me in its grasp. And instead of tidily sneezing and pretending that nothing happened there I was chest and chin thrust forward sounding like a child’s train.
AHCHOOCHOO
It is very hard to regain your dignity when you’re completely overthrown by something so very uncontrollable as a double sneeze.
And let me tell you this has never happened in human history and WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.
Because the minute I brought attention to myself through my involuntary actions everyone on the train snapped around to look at me simultaneously and looked away LIKE THEY HAD NEVER EVEN SEEN ME.
Thus I conclude no one has ever double sneezed before, no one has ever witnessed a double sneeze and it will never, NEVER happen again.
You saw nothing...
A man stands near me. He is rotund and jolly and no he is not father Christmas spouting the ha ha ha crap that seems to accompany this odd festive season. He is an older man. He lives in a different world to the one I live in and yet there we stand only metres apart. He starts talking to me. Telling me about his time. When the very railway station we were standing on was 100m further up the track. I have learnt something new from this genial man so why am I still hesitant to engage in conversation on a railway station platform? He talks of how much a beer was in his day. He tells me of the drunken brawls in the pub where no-one would end up stabbed in his day. He tells me of how property prices have gone up since his day. And suddenly I am hooked. This flushcheeked rotund stranger is my history personified. He carries these stories that are indicative of our history. He is our history. Living and breathing. Standing on a railway station platform wishing to speak it to anybody that will listen. So why aren’t we listening? I start to look at the situation as if I were sitting on my own shoulder. Who is the odd one out here? The lovely man who lives in a world where people can strike up a conversation with a stranger no matter the time or place? The bystanders who watch me as if I’m odd to be conversing with a man who is clearly breaking all the rules of shutting one’s self down in public? Or is it me for wanting to live somewhere between those two worlds?
You learn so much by talking with strangers.
Wundrin wot lngge s gna b lke in 400 yrs? Tke a luk at Shakespeare n c if u cud hve a conva wi ne1 wi dat lngge. Wud day undastan u evn if u trid? Nw fink bout d net lngge n tri n cum up wif sumfin as foren as dat 4 d futa. U rekn wer gna undastan our kidz? U rekn wer gna b abl t spek 2 ech utha? Dey gna b usin breevs vrywer n teln us wer lk so ol 4 tryn t tlk d tlk wi dem n wel b wundrin wot hapnd t d gud ol dayz. D wurs prt s dey gna gt rid o vocab. Wer gna b stuk usn d sam wurdz al d tim n sur is kwika bt der gos our lngge, our xpreshn, our wy of ritin bout d world n undastanin it. Mybe wel start thinkn ecnomicly 2 jst getn by wif a few wordz as thorts.
Duz it libr8 or ncage us dis ritin?
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