Before I moved to my new building, I used to sit within a few feet of a guy who needs to sneeze twice. If he doesn’t, he finds no satisfaction. Once, he even claimed very matter-of-factly that some people were single sneeze people, but he, in fact, was “a 2 sneeze guy.”

Of course if someone tells me a “fact,” I will feel a need to prove the theory, right? Don’t we all need some modicum of proof in our daily lives? Well, I do. I needed to test my co-workers theory about himself by greeting his initial sneezes with a sarcastic “gubleshyou” or by cupping my hand to my ear as if waiting for that second sneeze just to see if he was what he claimed to be.

Within a very short time, the jibes began to actually prevent him from sneezing a second time. Naturally, I began to feel bad about it (a little) and would just sit quietly after the first sneeze and let him take the second unfettered. But then he began to notice me actively keeping quiet, and my mere presence became enough of an influence to prevent the second sneeze, whether I said anything or not.

It wasn’t long before his entire theory about being a “two sneeze man” came into question when the mere thought of me waiting for him to sneeze a second time began to influence the situation. I didn’t even have to be present anymore. I had somehow built a tiny sneeze prevention robot and implanted it into his brain.

If I had been born a bespectacled Norwegian with a lab coat and some zeros in his name, I would get a fucking Nobel Prize for this sort of thing, but as a corporate American citizen, all that I can hope for is that the gunshot wound won’t be in a lethal area.

Anyway. We recently moved to a new location, and the new seating arrangements prevent me from checking on the status of the robot or exerting any direct influence in the sneeze prevention department. After two long years, the guy was finally free to sneeze at will.

Here’s a fact for you that 90% of you will understand: I am someone’s big brother. Whether I want to accept it or not, torture is genetically imprinted in older siblings.

After nearly a week in his new desk, when he finally felt comfortable enough to think that he could sneeze his first and second sneezes with both authority and impunity, I arranged to have the guy who now sits across from him to say,

“Jon says god bless you.”

Give me a sneeze, Vasili. One sneeze only, please.

Update: The guy who sits across from my sneezing co-worker came over to my desk this morning and we had a laugh about our little prank. Then he told me that he couldn’t do anything else because the sneezer made him promise that he wouldn’t mention my name and “bless you” in the same sentence again. Because of those big brother genetics, I wrote something on a piece of paper, sealed an envelope, and put the sneezer’s name on it. “Next time he sneezes, you give him this. Since you don’t know what’s in it, you are within the confines of your promise.” I think I laughed for 15 minutes afterward, because the only thing in the envelope was a piece of paper that said “Bless you.” I had to wait all day for the results, but I guess it worked, because I found the note and the envelope crumpled on my desk, and heard the guy had been gearing up to tear my desk apart before he suddenly regained his composure.

Posted in Work