Memories of Sneezing: My Stories
Whenever I had trouble falling asleep at night, my mother told me to write a story in my head and by the time I finished, I'd be alseep. Interestingly enough, most of the time these stories I'd make up had everything to do with sneezing. Over the years, these stories changed and grew, and some were even written down.
* Early Childhood * Later Childhood * Early Teen Years * Later Teen Years *
| Early Childhood When I was young I knew everything... |
I used to make up a certain story way back when I was 4 or 5 or 6 about a land where it was always damp and rainy and people's rooms were dark holes in walls. It was a half of a planet and on that half of the planet everyone was always sick and sneezing from colds. On the other half, it was always bright and sunny and no one was ever sick. The two sides were at war and the one would smuggle germs over the boarder so people would catch colds while the other side would send over vitamin bombs. They would trade with tissues and soup... you get the idea. I never wrote it down, but I kept going through it in my head over and over again through my childhood so I've never forgotten it.
Another thing I used to do was make up stories for television episodes. My favorite one to do as a little kid was Sesame Street, as you might imagine. I'd put together all the sketches I had seen (Snuffy, Mr.Meep, the Count) and write some of my own as well. Pound Puppies was one of my all time favorite shows and I would make up many different stories about Cooler stumbling through the snow for a rescume, then getting sick and Holly having to take care of the whole pound. Sometimes I would integrate my own pound puppy stuffed animals into the storylines. I actually wrote one of these stories in second grade- it was a whole 3 pages long and I was so immensely proud of it, even though the plot rather stopped after 2 pages. I actually turned it in during class and it's still in my writing portfolio from way back then. |
Later Childhood Why stop a good thing? |
As mentioned, some of my stories were television episodes... this was very common for me in my later childhood (9-12ish). Tale Spin- Kit(who was always my favorite) has a cold and Balou takes care of him. The big guy ends up catching it from him and Becky still expects them to work, sending them to somewhere like Thembria where it's pretty darn cold. Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers- Starts out with everyone sick except for Gadget(the female mouse) and Zipper(the fly). They run around trying to make everyone happy, bringing Chip tea in bed and Dale extra tissues as he's sneezing nonstop and blowing his already-red nose, and bringing Monty an extra blanket to where he's sprawled out on the couch. In the first few minutes of the "show" Zipper sneezes as well and thus Gadget is left to care for them all. That's all I came up with :-) Step By Step- In my story, J.T. feels sick and is still forced to go to school as no one believes him. His teachers on the other hand, notice right away the sneezing and his falling asleep in class and so he is sent to the clinic. He calls his parents who again don't believe him, and even calls home (where Dana is home sick with a cold) but she doesn't believe him either. So he spends the day in the clinic, sniffling and suffering on one of those little cots. When the bell rings, he catches the bus home and heads upstairs right away. On the way to his bedroom, he stops by the girls' room to ask Dana if he can borrow some tissues and tylenol. It's then she realizes he was telling the truth and feels terribly guilty, immediately putting him to bed. There was more planned... getting revenge on the parents, etc, but the plot never seemed as much fun as the initial parts here of him coming down with a cold and complaining, so I never wrote the rest. |
Early Teen Years Why didn't my friends who read all these stories catch onto the theme? |
During middle school, I wrote a lot. Basically, it helped me forget I was doing through Hell. When I look back at my writings, nearly every one I wrote outside of creative writing class has to do with sneezing or ill characters. Sometimes, more of them ill without the sneezing, but it's still readily present in most of my writings. Here is a collection of some of the more interesting ones. The Messenger/Nowhere to Run- Originally 'Nowhere to Run' this was a story of a messenger, feverish and thrown from his horse. There was originally less sneezing and more of a plot to it. I actually handed in the first version of this story for a grade during a short story unit in English class. Procathia Stories- Procathia was a made up land of mine, a fantasy land that grew into 13 books that read more like a fantastical soap opera of character who were always coming down with colds or fevers. There was a lot of angst and a lot of guy bonding moments. But even more than that was the amount of people ill and needing assistance. Shown here are the books (anywhere from 20 unfinished pages to 400 pages) that involve this theme:
Freaky Teen Angst story- There was a story where a guy (high school age) lived alone. Both his parents had died when he was around 4 or 5 and he ended up taking care of himself since then. (Don't ask me how, I apparently thought it was possible and tried explaining how it was so). Anyway, he is sick one day and after calling himself in sick, spends the day on the couch sniffling and sneezing. His girlfriend (who didn't know about his living alone) comes over to nurse him back to health. The Jazz Guys- The plot is way too long to explain, but basically two guys run to New Orleans after high school graduation to live their musical dreams. One great scene where one of them is sick with a cold and a girl he has a crush on comes over (she'd been kicked out of her place). He takes her in out of the rain, gets her clothes, and sets her up for the night (and longer) even though he's feeling rather sick. So... my best friends both read most of these stories... if not all of them. And yet they never seemed to mention the common thread. And it's not like I had a lot of non-sick related material. Maybe 5 or 6 stories and that's it. Kinda funny, really. But hey, I liked it. Whatcha gonna do? |
Later Teen Years How my stories came to the internet... and how TOS came to be |
I was only just 17 when I first stumbled upon people with actual fetishes for sneezing. I had never before considered my great interest to be sexual. Yes, I'll say it was romantic and I really, really dug sick guys and sneezing in general. I'd even stumbled upon the 'Claritin Sounds Page' with wavs of people sneezing and for a while went there and listened to them once every few days pretty much. I really liked them, and yes I might experience a little warmth in certain areas, but I still did not understand that it was a fetish or that it had sexual implications for me. I just... liked hearing guys sneeze, was that so wrong? Well, I stumbled upon some news postings... and followed them with interest. Just like some people liked sports, here were people like me who liked sneezing (well, maybe not just, but you know what I mean)! I followed their discussions and postings (too scared to subscribe to the newsletter while still using my parents computer!) and then was amazed when one guy actually created a website. Then, another. Now there were two websites. That plus Claritin which I still visited to hear the sounds often, meant LOTS of cool material about sneezing. I even took the SFO feedback survey something like 8 times- just couldn't get enough of it! However, the name of the first website scared me. 'Sneezing Fetish Online'. Fetish was a sexual word, wasn't it? Like foot fetish. Ick. I didn't have one of those... these people were totally weird. I just liked sneezing. It was an interest. However I justified it, I visited the pages every day, usually... jumping on updates! Then I began to think about how nice it might be to give these sites something back. I wasn't about to make a wav- didn't have a microphone and didn't know how. I didn't have any pictures- of myself or others. But maybe I could write. Yes... I could do that! So after thinking about it for a while, I sat down one afternoon before dinner and wrote a short story about a man sneezing. It was a nice story, and I mulled over every word, feeling that some was, well, what I really liked and some was what these people with fetishes really liked. I typed it all up in the usenet posting box text field and my mouse sat there near send for quite a while. Did I really want to do this? Yes. Yes I did. So I submitted it. Suddenly there came an e-mail message for me asking me if I really wanted to have this posted and it was then that I finally chickened out. This was a family computer, and I wasn't sure I wanted this read by everyone in the world. And I certainly didn't want it associated with my website and my "clean" internet identity. But I still really wanted to give something back and to see an update that I had contributed to. So, I sent it to the prof, faking my e-mail address and calling myself anonymous and asking him to put it on his site and PLEASE PLEASE mark it anonymous and also protesting to him many times that I did not have a fetish for sneezing, it was just an interest. This story was The Honeymoon. Many times I looked the word 'fetish' up in the dictionary. One definition was a strong, overwhelming interest in something. That's more like what I had. So I guess in a way, I did have a fetish, right? But it wasn't sexual. No not at all. I dug stories like 'Sneezing Lab' and 'Laura's Discoveries' eventhough I didn't really care for female sneezing. It was all right... but I didn't like it at all as much as guys. Why in the world did I like those stories then? I was starting to make little sense. Perhaps- and this I still believe somewhat- that after so many years of me thinking up stories and loving television sneezes and such, it was just SO amazing to see collections of it that I didn't care what it was as long as it was sneezing. I adored the male material, but anything was better than nothing. Either way, fetish or not, I decided to write a second story, this time for the female section. You know, to balance things out and make the guys happy. I e-mailed this (again, attempting to disguise my e-mail address which was my parent's e-mail account) to both Prof_S and Gurm, webmasters of both of the sites, again mentioning please to be anon and that I didn't have a fetish, just kinda liked it. Who better to write a story about a woman sneezing than a woman, right? This story, originally called 'Beep! Ring! Achoo!' in what must have been a moment of complete insanity on my part LOL! Neither webmaster called it that (misunderstanding which was lucky for me, LOL! Prof_S called it untitled and Gurm called it Amie) and it went on to be called The Sound Effects. To my absolute horror, both webmasters replied to my e-mail (even after my asking them not to) and thanked me for the great story. I was filled with so much happiness and pride and even more so to see the stories posted. WOW! How cool was that?! After all of this, I began contemplating making my own site. I could use it to put all of the material from both pages and online (like the Claritin page) all together on one site. See, to get to either page, I still went through Yahoo and erased the history so no one in my family would know or see. To have my own page with everything on it would make things sooo much easier. I could save and keep these files, because surely I could not save them onto my computer! And I could write all I wanted without needing to worry about them e-mailing me at my parents' e-mail account. So, the Tarot of Sneezing was born... and with it came the barage of stories you know well :-) Oh, and I finally admitted that it was a fetish. In all senses of the word. Sometimes very nonsexual. Other times, well, I was 17 when I wrote my first +18 story :-) One of the funniest e-mails I got once I announced my webpage was from Gurm (who had not yet put two and two together as to who I was). He liked my page and was eager to read 'The Squire' as it was a story he had not read yet. I replied 'That's because I haven't finished writing it yet. Every story on my page, I wrote.' He caught on that I was the anon scaredy-cat after that. |
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All stories and many graphics are property of TG and should not be posted. Fictional
characters are the properties of their owners, and many wavs are the property of
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