There was a time when I could stop everything around me...with my sneeze. It wasn’t because people were startled or alarmed, it’s because they didn’t know what was happening.

Once in college when I sneezed in an English class, my professor stopped his lecture in mid-sentence and said, “What the hell was that?”

My mom called it my “little mouse sneeze” and it sounded squeaky and tight like maybe someone was trying to pull that poor mouse through a key hole.

“Atcheeeeeeooooooo.”

People told me all the time not to hold back my sneezes: that it was bad for my brain or my eyeballs or my throat or something. But didn’t think I was holding them back. As long as I could remember, I’d always sneezed my little mouse sneeze. It was the only way I knew.

Until lockdown.