FAST AIR
People who make serious, scientific tests and studies, and who should know about
such things, tell me that when I sneeze . . . just a simple ker-choo, mind you, it could be
that I am expelling air from my insides with true hurricane force . . . anywhere from
seventy-five miles per hour up to a as much as an impressive one hundred. That would
say my sniffle is just a Tropical Depression, I suppose, forming up to become the real thing.
But, you think those speeds are a bit too high, wait until you hear what I am
supposed to be doing when I decide to cough, or cough, because I don’t think many
people sit around deciding if they are going to cough or not. We teach our children to
stifle their cough or sneeze by placing a hand o handkerchief over their mouths and nose,
but that may just be inviting disaster, in one sense, because the force with which a cough
expels air from our lungs might blow that handkerchief back to the cotton fields or break
the kid’s fingers.
When a person coughs, studies indicate, the human body, on average, expels air
from the respiratory system at a rates which vary from up to three hundred miles per hour!
Now, I’m among those clucks who would laugh if a “Flat Earth Believer - yes there
are still quite few of them around - asked a dumb question like: ”If the Earth is a round ball,
how come we don’t fall off?” Right at this point I’m wondering if I should ask those high
speed wind experts: “H’come, if I sneeze at up to a hundred mile so per hour speeds and
cough at up to three hundred miles per hour, as you say we do, h’come we’re not all
plastered up against the wall next to the ceiling somewhere by simple jet expulsion
reaction? Heaven help the person who sneezes while outdoors or coughs several times!
Maybe that what has happened to some of the “missing person” persons on police
blotters all over the country.
Seriously, though, the force with which we expel air in an effort to force out foreign
bits from our respiratory system’s narrow passages is astonishingly high. I doubt if may
sneeze and cough meters record those reaching the upper levels cited for shock value in
writing or talking about it, but it can still prove to e remarkably fast.
We should not ignore a cough or a sneeze because it identifies a problem or a
potential one. I know it should be treated with seriousness, but one of the comedy acts I
remember most is one we used to see, primarily in what were called “Short Subjects” at
our local movie theaters. A fat fellow by the name of Jack Smart used to do a comedy
routine on various types and sizes of sneezes. His waxy little mustache wiggled and helped
out a great deal in his sneezing demonstration which always seemed to get out of hand
and become orgies. Jack Smart was one of the few comedians who, literally, left me rolling
on the floor trying to contain my painful laughter. I have even been driven to leaving the
room to live to tell about it. I thought of Smart’s sneezes when I read about the sneeze
and cough speeds recently. He did little puffs, summer breezes, high, winds, gales,
tornadoes, monsoons, hurricanes - all of them, and each one was funnier than half of any
previous one.
For some strange reason, I tend to associate Jack Smart as being a vocalist with
“Ted Fiorito and His Orchestra.” Can anyone tell me if I am wrong in doing so? He also did
some sneeze-bit parts in several movies, I’m sure.
Pardon me a moment....(Sound effect).
There! That’s better! Much better!
A.L.M. July 28, 2002 [652wds]
