What are you allergic to?
What causes you to break out in itchy red spots, what triggers an asthma attack or intestinal gas leaks?
Here are my top three.
Work is a common cause of allergies.
Statistically, your self-important, patronising boss is a prime suspect as the major allergen at work. Does hearing her prancing vaingloriously down the corridor spouting cheery greetings cause you to vomit? You are showing symptoms of a gastrointestinal allergy to your boss. Do you suddenly develop a migraine when you have to go into his office and see those ridiculous photos that he claims are his sporting achievements? He has one of someone skydiving (in an anonymous facemask) barefoot water-skiing (the spray covers most of the face) and planting a flag on a mountain peak that he insists is Mount Everest in a snowstorm. You suspect it is actually the top of the beginners’ ski slope at a local ski resort. The other two photos could be almost anyone.
Treatment: the only known treatment for boss allergy is avoidance of the allergen. Sneak a tracking app onto his phone so that you can avoid face-to-face contact whenever possible.
Football is a dangerous sport, especially if you have developed an allergy to it.
Do you feel queasy and bloated when you go to work on a Monday morning? You are probably dreading your co-workers’ enthusiastic dissection of the weekend’s football matches. It doesn’t matter what football code it is. You can develop a severe football allergy if you are overexposed to any type. Like atomic radiation, repeated exposure is cumulative and could result in fatal football sickness. You may feel nauseous as you hear verbal replays of the highlights, detailed match statistics, laments about injuries to key players and corrupt refereeing decisions. Does just hearing this now make you sneeze violently or cause blurred vision or both? It’s football allergy for sure.
The football allergen is very difficult to avoid, even in the off-season. The media love to pander to addicts needing their football fix. So they produce ridiculous articles about hopeless teams coming back from the dead next season, the debauched off-field excesses of players in pubs and clubs and reviews of the greatest games in the last 150 years. As if anyone could remember any of them. I can barely remember how to get to the football ground, let alone the last match I saw. Do you feel the need to belch just reading this? You probably have a football allergy. To check this diagnosis just rub some of your bare skin across the TV screen when match highlights are being shown. If you are truly allergic to football, an angry red rash will develop almost immediately.
Treatment: football is so all pervasive today that it is impossible to avoid. Counter attack is the best defence. When friends go on and on about football, switch the conversation to some other sport you have researched such as turnip throwing, frog racing or bus spotting. Make up some statistics about it then drone on and on to your friends. The problem will soon be resolved as you lose your friends. In addition, sell your TV and radio and never read a newspaper (nobody does any more anyway). If your internet news-feed keeps on slipping in football news download the Football Allergy Filter. Then go and live in Tibet.
Loudspeaker phone calls can cause horrific allergic reactions.
We’ve all heard them. People in public places or at work who share both sides of their inane phone conversations by setting their phone to “loudspeaker”.
Do I want to hear their chatter? No. Do they want to force their personal conversations on the world? Yes, apparently.
Do you develop ringing in your ears, or break out in a cold sweat or do your legs jiggle uncontrollably while you have to endure this two-way torture? It’s probably Loudspeaker Phone (LP) allergy.
The problem is that with a person’s phone on loudspeaker you can hear all the dreary details whether you want to or not. If the person next to you on the train talks loudly on the phone without the loudspeaker, the conversation is probably too disjointed to disturb you. But if you are forced to hear the full dialogue your LP allergy could erupt.
Consider this conversation:
“We went away and stayed with his parents”
“Yes, they’re larger than life alright”
“His parents?”
“The mosquitoes and possums are pretty fierce out there”
“Yes they treat them like doggy royalty”
“My husband says they would be heartbroken”
“You’re absolutely right about that”
This sounds like a fairly ordinary conversation about visiting parents-in-law. Unfortunately I had to endure both sides of the phone call because it was on loudspeaker. This was it:
“We went away and stayed with his parents”
“Don’t they have those two huge wolfhounds who live inside the house and leave their hair and fleas in your bed?”
“Yes, they’re larger than life alright”
“How do you stand it? If I was you I’d lock them out of the house”
“His parents?”
“Parents and dogs. Fleas in the bed – that’s disgusting. And hair. And other things. I’d rather pitch a tent in the backyard”
“The mosquitoes and possums are pretty fierce out there”
“Better than sleeping with fleas and dog smells. You’ll probably get worms. Do they still feed the dogs from their dinner plates?
“Yes, they treat them like doggy royalty”
“Can’t you make an excuse not to go and visit them?”
“My husband says they would be heartbroken”
“I still think it’s disgusting. The place sounds like a stinking garbage dump”
“You’re absolutely right about that”
After I heard this conversation I started to itch and scratch uncontrollably. I’m still scratching myself weeks later. The allergist diagnosed it as Loudspeaker Phone allergy. He recommended using a spray-on deterrent called “Loud Off”. Apparently it smells like a really decayed dead cat and generally forces people nearby to flee for their lives. I asked him if the cure was worse than the complaint and he said I would get used to it.
-Geoff Milton
