Would You Rather Be Seasonal Allergies Or A Hangover?
A May question to tease your wits.
Here’s a pretty tricky May question to tingle your brain and test your ability to make the best of two bad options given no other choice. Would you rather be seasonal allergies or a hangover? It’s difficult because there are pluses and minuses with each of them, but mostly minuses, but the minuses are different, so it’s really just up to whatever works better for you personally. With seasonal allergies a plus is that it’s spring now. The trees are pink and they haven’t gotten to their green stage yet, or maybe they’re just starting to turn green and the ground and nearby car windshields are covered in their nice pink confetti. That’s nice. You can walk in it and take a picture of your shoes and put it on social media, if that’s something you want to do. Of course, you’re looking at the nice pink trees or confetti through blurred vision while your eyes sting and itch and your nose runs and your throat hurts and you want to die. It’s a give and take, if you’re seasonal allergies. Plus you would last for weeks. If you’re a hangover, you only last for one or two days. But there’s no equivalent to the “plus” of springtime, if you’re a hangover. Unless you had a fun night. Then that’s a plus. Maybe the cause of your hangover is the reason why you finally spoke to your crush, and now he’s texting you like, “Wild party, right???” And maybe you’re going to fall in love and get married. 🙂 (If you want to get married; maybe marriage isn’t really your thing, and that’s fine, too.) In that case, a one or two-day hangover is worth it, I think anyone would agree. However, there is, I think, and I hate to presume anything, but this feels right to me: a larger chance that the source of your hangover caused something negative rather than something positive. Maybe you yelled at someone, or crashed your car (!). Maybe you weren’t as charming as you could have been, and now your crush thinks you’re not so great and he’s not texting you at all (!). And instead it’s your friend texting you, and she’s asking you, “you OK?” That’s not a situation you ever want to be in. Then you, the hangover, well, now you’re adding insult to injury, you know. Injury to insult, really. Embarrassed or in legal trouble and sick. Damn. Seasonal allergies last for a long time, though, and hangovers only last for one or two days. I know we already went over that but I feel like we didn’t talk about it enough. Seasonal allergies…you can take medicine but nothing really helps that much, so it’s a nonstop nightmare for weeks. Red eyes, itchy. Runny nose. You can’t really focus on having a conversation with someone because of all your physical discomforts. Work is extra hard both because it’s nice outside and because you feel like you want to jump out of your body forever and live as a spirit on the astral plane. You can’t get away from it. Seasonal allergies only come once a year, though; hangovers can happen whenever. That’s a plus for seasonal allergies. Get it all over with at once, and then you can enjoy summer. But probably if you added up all your hangovers for one year they wouldn’t last nearly as long as seasonal allergies last, unless you drink a lot and have hangovers all the time. I’m not judging you at all, this is just a thought exercise and I’m trying to iron out all the details. Hangovers you did it to yourself and you have that “hanging” “over” you. Allergies you have no control over. I’m not sure which of those is better, really, or worse. At least you have some agency with the hangover. Hangovers mean you did damage to your body but having seasonal allergies doesn’t, I don’t think. I’m not a doctor. Hangover you got to have a fun cocktail, seasonal allergies you get to have a fun bouquet of spring flowers. Your skin looks bad with both. Both you feel awful and want to die. So what would you be?
Please choose: