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| Click on this picture to see the most accurate DILMS depiction ever. |
I was in my car at a stoplight with the window down a few mornings ago when I heard a horrific noise that made me jerk and look around in terror. It sounded like a seal had been smacked with a shovel while it was in the middle of “orking.” Then I happened to look in my rearview mirror as the sound came again. It was the guy in the truck behind me sneezing out his window. This sound was enough to terrify me a car up with my radio on and traffic noises all around.
Ridiculously loud sneezes are like the nasal version of manspreading. Like most other women, I have been conditioned my whole life to make my sneezes as small and quiet as possible. Bonus girl points if you can make it sound cute. It seems most of the men I’m around, however, have been conditioned to compete with heavy metal concert decibel levels when they sneeze. I call it DILMS: Distracting, Inappropriately Loud Male Sneezes.
My friend’s husband literally knocked over a guitar that was sitting on a stand with the force of his sneeze alone. My husband’s sneezes have at one time or another awoken every member of our household. They’ve also made me drop books I’m reading. So loud and unpredictable are my boss’s sneezes that they make me mistype words on a regular basis. He’s usually sitting in another room when it happens, but the blast is potent enough to freak me out like someone jumping out at me at a haunted house.
Contrary to the belief of every man I’ve argued with about this, you will do no internal damage if you tone down the volume of your sneeze. You don’t even have to use your voice when you sneeze at all! You can just let that mucus fly right out of your nose without trying to sound like a space shuttle launch. The noise is not connected to the physical act.
Many think manspreading is a way that men show dominance or show that they think they’re entitled to more space. DILMS are much the same.
“Excuse me, my lesser humans, but testicles entitle me to eject a noise of startling proportions whenever a booger tickles my sinuses. I expect you, oh bearers of estrogen, however, to sound like Betty Boop being lightly pinched when you sneeze.”
A little of this can be excused if an effort is made to mitigate the DILMS’s sound upon its exit from the face, such as burying your nose and mouth in your elbow or a tissue. Most of the men I know don’t even try to do this, despite the obvious public health issues surrounding it. My husband claims it’s because he never knows when it’s coming. Sorry, but I don’t think it’s my ovaries that allow me the ability to sneeze into my elbow every single time. Breasts don’t grant you that foresight, but the feeling in your nose does, and that’s a unisex indicator.
Obviously, men suffer much more during things like the common cold so I guess it makes sense they would like to convince us all of their exceptional discomfort through audible means. But no one appreciates having the pee scared out of them because the people with penises have allergies.
Men, you are not entitled to startle everyone in a 50-foot radius whenever you spontaneously clear your sinuses. Practice toning that crap down and have your inner elbow at the ready. Otherwise, you will bear one of the greatest insults a Midwesterner can dish out: I will NOT say bless you.
