It is true that one man's habit is another man's amusement. Case in point: sneezing. Yes, sneezing. The act that every human, animal and amoeba are forced to engage in when something has clogged the ventilation systems.
We were in class and not too long before all my students came down with an illness or two. The first three weeks are always the worst. They are eating strange food, injesting water with weird microbes and generally partying till they puke, which at some point within the first three weeks, comes back to haunt them. The sneezing starts around this time, so this is when I start with the "God bless you!" At first, they just collectively laughed every time I said it, out loud, with an obvious tinge of amusment. Then, slowly as it kept happening, it became somewhat of an irritation to me. So, getting up my nerve, I asked one day. "Guys, why is it every time I say God bless you after you sneeze, you all laugh?" Robin Hood, King of English forest stated dryly, "It's because we don't do that after someone sneezes, we don't believe in God, we are communists. It suddenly hit me, my god, they are communists! There is no God according to this ideaology, so of course this is going to be outrageous to them! I proceeded to then explain the whole sneezing story, as it had been relayed to me. They listened in amusement. Nothing much was said after that. The chuckles continued now and again after someone had let a good one rip, but the mystery of sneezing had lost its allure. Like all other cultural differences, eventually the difference becomes the norm...and we all just reach for a tissue!
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