Undoubtedly a lot of time, effort, and money has been put towards proving the validity of this claim even though I'm fairly certain that my parents' Dachshund disproved the theory by regularly dry-humping a large teddy bear they'd given him. He didn't care about whether or not he was impregnating a willing lady and furthering his species in the process, all he was focused upon was that knew what he was doing felt good at the time. Sadly, the little guy didn't get to enjoy himself for long - he was neutered in an effort to improve his temperament (I was against the idea at first but it wound up that he had an un-descended testicle which could've caused him serious issues in the future had it not been dealt with). It wound up improving his attitude and his appetite.
Plants, on the other hand, are a perfect example of the before mentioned thesis. I don't know about you, but I've never seen a tree uproot itself to go get busy with another tree in a different part of town because all the trees around it were frigid or just plain not his type. Plants are stuck in a cyclical system of sexual reproduction whereby they rely on the wind or various insects and critters to distribute pollen, their sickly, dull, yellow-colored seed. And therein lies the problem for people such as myself who suffer from allergies made all the more worse by this process we call pollination.
The part of the world I'm from isn't a concrete jungle; we have lots of trees, shrubbery, farmland, and what have you down here and it makes for a beautiful, lush landscape. When springtime comes around and all those things I mentioned start firing off their collective copulation payload, every unprotected surface gets coated with the stuff, giving the terrain a dingy, muted glaze the color of a boiled egg's yoke. We've had particularly dry conditions the past few years which allows the pollen to gather upon the ground almost like grains of sand and nearly as thick in some areas. Around this time a year ago my wife was in the process of having her bridal portraits made, some of which were going to be taken outside. She and the photographer actually had concerns over the fact that there was so much pollen floating around that it could stain her wedding dress. It's to a point right now that if I walk across the parking lot of my office building I can scrub my shoes off on the welcome mats and leave a trail of pollen behind. Similarly, my truck is a kind of burnt orange color but right now it has a completely unappealing yellow tinge (as does most every other vehicle). What's worse is that it does no good to bother washing it because the residual moisture will only act as a sponge for more pollen!
My Mom had me tested for allergies when I was a kid - it's a normal procedure for children to have, right in line with immunizations and regular check-ups. I don't remember the scenario as it was done when I was very young but for those who don't know, the process of testing someone for allergies is such that you're basically turned into a human pin cushion. Needles coated with different substances are jabbed into your skin, normally on a large surface such as your back or arms, and then doctors can tell you what you're allergic to based on the materials to which you react.
Considering the amount of allergy medication I've taken in my lifetime (pills, nasal sprays, injections - you name it, I've had it), I figure I must have turned funny colors and swollen up like an Elephantiasis patient after my test. Fortunately, allergies are something you can grow out of and mine have become less severe over the years (better cleaning and air conditioning technology has helped as well in cutting down on my exposure to dust and other airborne particulates around the house). Be that as it may, when springtime approaches and plants start pumping out pollen I have to stock up on medication - and tissues.
My allergies manifest themselves in a number of ways. I can sometimes feel an allergy attack coming on as the skin around my neck and face will become warm and flushed. This is a precursor to a range of other symptoms, none of which are particularly less than gross to have to deal with. The effects of my allergies on my eyes can vary from causing them to become either watery, sticky, or dry. (For example, as I write this post I'm blinking through blurry splotches as today is a sticky kind of day.) Seeing as how my eyesight isn't that great to begin with, the additional strain put on them by this set of possibilities doesn't help matters. Aside from the already mentioned redness, skin irritation has never been much of a problem for me. My sinuses, on the other hand, are the real horror show. I won't go into great detail about that side of my allergies here; suffice it to say that mucus and I are well acquainted with one another to the point of where we're either best friends or worst enemies. The most annoying thing about when my slimy cohort arrives is that it often sets in at night. Sometimes I'll even be woken up from a sound sleep by a sneeze which is almost never easy to recover from in that I have great difficulty getting back to sleep. Trust me when I say that the infomercials on at 4 AM aren't all that entertaining.
So what are people like myself to do this time of year? Stay indoors as much as possible, take our medication, and pray for rain until the annual botanical orgy is over with. It's a defeatist attitude, I admit, but in a fight against Mother Nature more often than not you're better off trying to seek shelter than mount an offensive. I haven't put the idea of buying a gas mask with filters specifically for particulates completely out of mind.
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