and a little cup of pee

In the last two days, every green and fecund thing in the state of California has released its pollen in an orgy of priapic ecstacy, and as a result, hay fever has taken hold of everything above my neck. My eyes are puffy and watery, my vision is blurred, my head feels swollen, my nose is stuffed and itching, and I'm not positive -- I haven't had the nerve to verify -- but I think it's possible that my left ear has fallen off.

Hay fever is one of those things that I conveniently forget during the fall and winter, when the pollen count is low and I can actually breathe. Selective denial is perfectly in line with my worldview; I maintain equanimity and harmony through the excision of unhappy memories. It's always a shock at the beginning of the pollen season when I'm struck down by my own histamine production, and I flail for an astonished, self-pitying, miserable few days before I dimly recall a certain familiarity in the proceedings.

While I am gratified by my body's prompt leap to the defences at the lasciviousness of the California ragweed -- taking lessons from Bush administration and its attempt to expel the obscenities of both Janet Jackson nipples and gay marriage in a torrent of nasal pus -- I could wish that it was a little more selective in its objects of offense. It is possible that there are cases out there of people who have died due to overdoses of ragweed pollen or that ruthless killer, Dactylis glomerata, known by its street name, "Variegated Orchard Grass." If so, I haven't heard of it. In general, I would be far more impressed by my body's immune system if it reacted negatively to actual imminent death: attacking pit bulls, plummeting airplanes, black ice, that sort of thing. It would be nice to get a little sneeze warning system going, my body's way of whispering, "I say old bean, you might not want to stick your fork in that socket. What I mean to say is, it's the little sort of something almost guaranteed to give you the pip, what?"

My sister didn't get the job in Yosemite, I'm sorry to say; she called me yesterday afternoon, vaguely mournful, to tell me the bad news. It's unfortunate. While it's true that I'm her sister and therefore afflicted with a certain measure of partiality for her, I think I can safely say -- with no bias whatsoever -- that she would have been excellent for the position. What was it? Okay, I admit, I'm not really sure. It's possible that it's the educator's position she was talking about six months ago. "Educate?"

"Campers. Tourists. You know."

"Educate them in what?"

"Why it's not a good idea for little Billy to put a peanut between his lips and try to feed it to a bear?"

In the meantime however, she's started applying to other jobs. She called me at work a few days ago in a highly agitated state to tell me about her experience with one of them. "They needed a drug test."

"Crap," said I, loyal sister that I am. "You failed again?"

Whether she had failed or not -- she thought not -- wasn't the issue, as it happened. The point was that she had to go in to take a drug test. "They gave me a cup and there was a line on it, and she told me to pee in it up to the line." My sister has no problem with the word 'pee.' "So I took it into the bathroom and I peed in it, and -- you can't see how much you've peed into the cup if you're peeing in it, so I found out when I was done that I'd gone over the line by about double. I just figured they could dump out what they didn't need. Better too much than too little."

Reasonable. I made encouraging noises and started work on an e-mail to send a coworker.

"So the lady told me to come out when I was done, so I came out carrying this cup of pee without any lid on it, and right outside the door there was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen."

Pause for a moment. Picture this. My sister. Cup of pee. Beautiful man. This is obviously not a story that will end well.

"You spilled pee on the beautiful man," I said flatly.

"He smiled at me," she said. "He was a beautiful man with a beautiful smile, and he smiled at me and said, 'Hello,' and I was so flustered because he was really, really-- oh my God, Yuhri, he was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen, and I was carrying a cup of pee. I was so flustered -- I'm still shaking -- so I mumbled something back at him and I turned to go to the desk and turn over my pee, and ...."

"You spilled pee on the beautiful man!"

"Somehow when I turned my right foot sort of stayed where it was or it folded or something, and I fell flat on my face on the cup of pee. It didn't have a lid on it."

She did not spill pee on the beautiful man. "You spilled pee on yourself."

"All over my arm," she said mournfully. "And the guy came rushing up and was like, all, 'are you okay?' and the lady at the desk came out and was all, 'did you hurt yourself?' And meanwhile I've splashed pee all over my arm and I'm totally red-faced because, jeez, this guy is, I swear, the most beautiful man I've ever seen and I've just SPILLED PEE ON MYSELF--"

However, all's well that ends well. She'd spilled out just enough pee that the level of pee in the cup was now perfectly aligned with the line marked on the inside of the cup. She had enough pee.

Isn't it nice how the universe makes sure everything works out for the best?

"Oh God," wailed my sister. "He was gorgeous! Gorgeous! And now he thinks I'm this spastic blubbering idiot!"

"You'll be the Pee Girl forever," I congratulated. "He'll go home and tell all his beautiful male friends about this clumsy chick and her cup of pee. You'll be a legend. Cool. He'll never forget you."

She made a whining noise and hung up on me.

I reviewed the e-mail I was typing to my coworker, carefully corrected the phrase, 'provide support for the beautiful pee,' and went on with my day.