The Origin of Misery (CM that can be read as original)

[Chanel_no5]

***Note***

Okay, I was a bit conflicted about where to post this fic. It IS about Blake from Criminal Minds, but it’s not a Criminal Minds fic since it’s taking place at her second job… and it could just as well be read as an original fic about an allergic teacher. So, you’re welcome to read it as you wish.

I have tried to get all my facts straight in this fic, and the origins of the words are correct. Translations from languages I don‘t speak are as literal as I possibly could get them by searching online. Also, I’m kind of nervous about posting a fic that is so focused on language when I write in a language that I don’t have a 100 % grasp of, so…

Anyway, let‘s do this before I change my mind. Be kind.

***

The word ‘pollen’ originated from the Latin, meaning ‘mill dust’ or ‘fine flour‘, and Alex Blake found it rather appropriate, given how it coated everything with a fine layer, like spilled flour… and made her sneeze, like dust. She went to great lengths to hide her condition from the rest of the world, particularly her students. She couldn’t think of anything more mortifying than suffering one of her relentless allergic sneezing fits in front of a whole class. So far she had managed to avoid such embarrassment, and she was perhaps getting too confident in her ability to fight back her body’s response to the airborne irritants… or perhaps she was just in for some bad luck.

She took a good look at her reflection in a pocket mirror and saw to her relief that the only tell-tale sign that she suffered from allergies was a slight redness in her eyes. Her students wouldn’t be close enough to tell. She blew her nose thoroughly to make sure she didn’t sound too congested. A hint of congestion would still be audible in her voice, but as long as it was just that - a hint - she could live with it.

She took a couple of fresh tissues and put them in the pockets of her blazer, just for safety measure. Little did she know that the whole box wouldn’t be enough after this class, and that was probably a blessing in disguise.

***

A few students lingered in the corridors, but not many; most were already in their classrooms. This eagerness was always at its height the first few weeks of a semester, then it faded. Alex glanced at her wrist watch and realised that she was at risk of running late, so she picked up her pace. She was so focused on not being late to her own class that she didn’t even notice the windows in the corridor were open, letting in a light breeze along with a swirling cloud consisting of billions of microscopic pollen grains. Alex walked straight through it, her mind preoccupied with work. But her already upset immune defense was more than alert and immediately detected the threat. The antihistamine in her system was trying to keep the gates closed against the sudden flood of histamine, and so far it could… but it wasn’t going to for very long.

***

“Cell phones aren’t allowed in class, remember?” she said as she walked into the classroom and put her things down onto the desk, two seconds before the clock struck nine. The students knew from only three weeks that she was one of those teachers you couldn’t mess with - possibly because she was also an FBI agent - and those with cell phones quickly put them away.

Alex went to the whiteboard and scribbled down five words:

Nice
Awful
Clue
Irony
Literally

As she was in the middle of writing, her nose began to tickle a little, and she rubbed it swiftly with her free hand while she continued writing. She thought nothing more of it; it wasn’t unusual for her nose to tickle at this time of year. Hell, it was unusual if it didn’t.

She turned to face the class, a total of 60 students.

“You all know what those words mean, don’t you?”

Most of them nodded, but a few - those who had heard of Alex Blake before, no doubt - looked somewhat apprehensive. As they should be; she quite enjoyed turning their world upside down from time to time.

“Good, then this exercise won’t be a problem. Someone use the first word in a sentence, please?”

A few hands in the air, but nowhere near the majority of the class. Alex smiled a little, crossed her arms and leaned back against her desk.

“Oh come on, do you expect me to believe that only ten of you have used the word ‘nice’ in conversation before?”

Some laughter and more hands in the air. She pointed at one of the guys in second row. He was dedicated, but a bit too cocky. Alex loved languages and she wasn’t a fan of those assaulting it, but nor was she a fan of self-proclaimed grammar police.

“Anton?”

She was vaguely aware that her hand had wandered back up to rub at her nose again, almost of its own accord, and she lowered it.

It’s just a tickle.

“Our linguistics professor is very nice.”

Alex smiled at him.

“I hope you refer to the modern use of the word, otherwise I’d feel offended. The origin of ‘nice’, dating back to the 12th century, is French and it used to mean ‘silly, ‘foolish’ or ‘stupid’. As more and more people misunderstand and misuse a word repeatedly, it changes meaning over the course of time, and often come to mean something completely different from when it first was used.”

Her nose definitely felt a bit runny now, and she sniffed lightly, hoping she wouldn’t have to take out the tissues and blow her nose. It wasn’t quite as embarrassing as sneezing, but it still wasn’t something she was keen on doing in front of an audience. Now that she thought about it, the tickle was worse, too.

“This is one way languages evolve; through misunderstandings. Next word, ‘awful’.”

One of the girls in the first row seemed to throw caution to the wind and didn’t even consider the possibilities of a hidden meaning in the word.

“The weekend weather was awful.”

Alex nodded slowly.

“Yes, it was, in Oklahoma with the tornado outbreak.” She sniffed again - what is this about? I’m indoors and I’m on medication, I shouldn’t feel like this! - and continued: “Circa 1300, the word was agheful, which means ‘worthy of respect or fear’. It came to mean ‘very bad’ as late as the 19th century.”

The tickle in her nose grew stronger and all of a sudden it was no longer possible to ignore. She raised one hand to her face and pinched her nostrils while turning slightly away from her students to stifle an almost soundless sneeze. Don’t you dare bless that one, she thought. For whatever reason they didn't; maybe they didn’t notice, or maybe they thought it was too puny to waste a blessing on. Alex was grateful for it.

When she had an allergy attack, the sneezes often started out rather soft and easy to stifle, but as her nose and throat continued burning from the torturous need to sneeze even more, they got louder, wetter and more violent, very uncharacteristic for her usual soft-spoken, low-key nature. Her husband used to tease her about her allergy fits, saying that was pretty much the only time she raised her voice.

She lowered her hand, but as soon as she let go of her nose, the urge to sneeze returned with a vengeance, and she had no choice but to stifle another. This time it wasn’t as quiet.

“Hah-NNKT!”

There were a couple of ‘bless you’s coming from the students and she nodded curtly.

“Excuse me. Third word - clue. Anyone?”

She sniffed again and pressed the back of her hand against her nose for a moment. It was prickling with the building urge to sneeze, and it was by sheer willpower alone that she managed to subdue it. The back of her throat was getting rather scratchy as well, and her eyes felt like she had gotten sand into them. She looked around for the culprit, unaware that she had pollen in her hair and on her clothes. It was too fine, too light, to be noticed, but not too fine to find its way into her extremely sensitive nose, setting off a chain reaction.

She pointed at a random student, no longer interested in playing with them. All she wanted was to get through this class without sneezing any more, something that she was getting increasingly convinced she wasn’t going to manage.

“I don’t have a clue,” the young man said, in an exaggerated voice that made the class laugh. Alex didn’t join their glee. All her attention was focused on her nose.

“Well, do you need one? Are you going to knit something?” she asked as she wrote another word next to ‘clue’ on the whiteboard. Turning away from the class was a relief, and she had to force herself to face them again. “Clew. I personally love this one because it’s so visual; you can really picture the use of yarn to find your way through a maze, for example. Also, the word for ‘clue’ in two of the Scandinavian languages directly translates into ‘leading thread’.”

Too late she realised that she had been too caught up in this to notice that the irritation deep within her nose had gone beyond the borders of “itchy” and into the realm of ‘going to sneeze NOW”. All she could do was to hold her breath, pinch her nose and restrain the outburst, forcing it into becoming a painful but quiet ‘nngtkk” instead of the wet explosion it wanted to become. Before anyone had the time to bless her, she moved on.

“As for the third Scandinavian language, the word for ‘clue’ directly translates to ‘trace’. Hah-ERSSCHUH!”

The sneeze came so suddenly she barely had time to get her arm up and sneeze into the sleeve of her jacket. It was followed by another, equally powerful, and so wet that she could feel it soak right through the fabric. Ew. She sniffled wetly and blinked away the tears that had started to well up in her eyes. She kept her arm up for a few seconds, evaluating the probability of another sneeze in the immediate future. She then decided to give her nose the benefit of the doubt, and lowered her arm, but she did so very slowly.

“Are you okay, doctor Blake?” one of the students in the first row asked, looking a bit shocked. Alex was rather shocked herself, to be honest. She quickly debated with herself whether to deny anything was wrong at all, or just admit to it and hopefully they would leave it alone. She chose the latter; it wasn’t like she could hide it any longer even if she wanted to.

“It’s just allergies, I’m fine,” she dismissed the topic altogether and prayed she wasn’t blushing. ‘Fine’ came out sounding like ‘fide’, and that wasn’t good.

“The pollen count is pretty high today,” someone else chimed in.

“I’m very well aware of that, thank you,” she replied and pointed to the fourth word, tapping the whiteboard with her pen. “Okay, moving on. This is a word that seems to confuse many people. Unlike the previous words it hasn’t changed meaning yet, but the misunderstanding and misuse of it has linguists believing that it’s in a state of evolution right now. I bring it up here to sort out some confusions about what it really means.”

By now her nose was itching so much she thought she would go insane. She rubbed it hard with the back of her hand, then with her knuckles, and then with her palm. All this was to no avail, in fact, it only seemed to make matters worse. Her sinuses and her throat both felt like they had been sprinkled with itching powder, and she almost wanted to claw her eyes out. A thick, yet still watery, sniffle escaped her and she couldn’t put it off any longer, she was in desperate need of blowing her nose. She fished one Kleenex out of her pocket and turned away from the class again. She proceeded to give her nose a soft, unsatisfying blow to at least keep it from dripping, and threw the used tissue into the trashcan. Just as she turned back to her students, opening her mouth to continue the lesson, she sneezed again. An embarrassingly loud sneeze that had her doubling over, one that took her so completely by surprise she had no chance of covering.

“HEH-YIESSCCHHAH!”

Oh my God. There is no way I can look at them again. I’ll just turn around and leave right now, not bothering to bring my things. I’ll go straight to my boss and hand in my notice and never look back.

Of course she wasn’t going to do that. But she wanted to. No, she yearned to.

That was the kind of sneeze that would have had James pretending to look for cover. I’ll never forget that time when I sneezed so loudly he fell out of bed. Well. It was time to get up anyway.

“Sorry,” she muttered and dared a quick glance at her wide-eyed audience. They looked shocked at this uncontrolled outburst coming from such a composed woman, but nobody said anything.

Shocked into utter silence. That’s interesting.

She reached for the other tissue and wiped her runny nose with it. This time she didn’t blow; she simply couldn’t afford wasting this tissue on one single blow when she was likely to need it for the rest of the period. She struggled to find her bearings and move on. Eventually she did.

“Irony. So what is ironic? Titanic was hailed as unsinkable. Yet it sank on its maiden voyage. That is the simplest example of irony. Irony is when the outcome is the exact opposite of what is expected.”

She trailed off and rubbed her nose, this time succeeding in warding off a sneeze. A small victory, given that she was now constantly balancing on the edge of a violent, non-stop allergic fit. It was inevitable, the question was only for how much longer she could hold it back.

“So what about sarcasm, then? Is sarcasm the same thing as irony? Well… they stand under the same umbrella, so to speak, but they‘re not the same thing. Verbal irony is saying the exact opposite of what you mean; ‘I certainly enjoy having allergies‘.“ She rolled her eyes and got a few giggles in response. “Sarcasm is saying the exact opposite of what you mean with the intention of hurting or teasing someone else. ‘It’s very kind of you to share your germs, doctor Blake, who doesn‘t appreciate that?‘.”

This time the whole class giggled. Normally, she never used herself in any examples - she preferred to keep a healthy distance to her students - but normally she didn’t sneeze in front of them either. Both sides were still shaken by this rare breach of personal control.

“This…” she said and pointed to the last word on the list. “…is my worst pet peeve. If I ever hear a student of mine misuse this word, there will be repercussions, trust me. This morning, when I came to work, I walked by a group of students in the corridor, and overheard one of them say, quote “I was so mad my head literally exploded”, end quote.”

She held her hands out as if to say ‘I give up’.

“Obviously her head hadn’t exploded. ‘Literally’ is not an intensifier. It means exactly what you say. Let’s take a look at the German word for it…huhh…”

Oh, God, not again…

She cupped her hands in front of her face just in time to catch a medium-volume half-stifle:

“Heh-igTSCHuh!”

“Gesundheit,” some ‘funny’ guy said from the back of the classroom, and there were a few scattered snickers. Alex knew she was blushing to the point where her cheeks probably had the same shade as her feverishly hot nose, but she tried to push past her embarrassment.

“And what does that mean?” she shot back. “Quick, now.”

“It means bless you!”

“That is incorrect. It means ‘health’,” she brushed him off. “Now, the German word for ‘literally’ is ‘buchstäblich‘, which means ’by the letter’ or ’to the letter’. Keep that in mind, please, please. If it’s literal, it’s exactly what you say.”

She wiped her nose with the lone tissue, wondering why she hadn’t brought the entire box with her. Or at least stuffed her pockets. Her nostrils widened as she struggled with yet another sneeze… and she suspected this would be the one to start the inevitable fit. Her entire head itched, it was beyond unbearable. She desperately needed to sneeze, to get some kind of relief from this torturous itch, and her body didn‘t wait for permission.

“Hehhh… eyISSCHUU! HaayISSCHHUH! Heh-yIESSCHHew!” She sniffled and tried to catch her breath, but another sneeze was already taking her nose hostage.

“Hehh… heh-EEHH-!” The sneeze failed her right before the release, backing off and left her watery-eyed and unsatisfied. She heard several giggles from her students as she sniffled and lowered her hands, only to raise one of them again to rub her knuckles furiously against the underside of her nose. But it was no use trying to fight it. Her eyelids fluttered and closed, her head tilted back a little and her breathing came in shallow, desperate, irregular gasps. Irritated tears escaped from the corners of her eyes, one tear was promptly running down her cheek and taking with it some of her mascara. The wings of her nose were crimson red at this point. She looked like a complete mess, and unfortunately, she was aware of it. She couldn’t go on. This was as far as her willpower could take her and she had to give in.

“C-class is… huhh… dismissed…” she said, barely managing to get the sentence out before her allergies overpowered her altogether. The expression on her face was one of pure agony; she felt like her sinuses had caught fire and the only thing she could do was to let the sneezes out.

“Hah-yIESSCCHOO! Heh-eRSSCHHuh! HeERRSSHHO! Hah-yISSSCHHEW! AAEESSCCHH! Huhhh… ahhhYIESSCCHHH! AH-ESSCHOO! Ah-ESSCHH! AH-ESSCHH! Hahhh-yiESCHHOO! Oh my G-gohh… aayIISSCHH!”

She came to a hesitant, dripping halt and sat down on her desk. She was exhausted and so embarrassed she didn’t know how to get through the rest of the day. She sniffled and wiped her nose with the sad, crumpled tissue, trying to catch her breath, all the while knowing this was just a brief pause in a fit that would last for hours.

“Doctor Blake?”

She straightened up when the female student approached, as the only one still left in the classroom. Alex tried to school her features into something that didn’t scream miserable mess, but she failed. Her eyes watered and her nose was streaming. She kept the tissue pressed to her nostrils and nodded, as she didn’t dare to open her mouth at the moment.

“May I just ask, what is the origin of ‘misery’?”

The origin of my misery is pollen, she thought and cleared her throat before she could speak at all. Her voice was scratchy and so drenched in congestion it was almost impossible to make out the words, but she did her very best to articulate them well. Mainly to make sure the young woman would understand, so Alex wouldn’t have to repeat herself.

“12th century Old French misere, meaning miserable situation, distress or misfortune.”

“I guess the meaning of that one didn’t change much,” the young woman remarked and left the classroom just before Alex released the two most violent and painful sneezes yet.

”OW-TSSCHHUH! AAERRGSSSHHHUH!”

She coughed out a chuckle and hid her flushed face in both hands. No, that particular word hadn’t changed a bit in nine centuries.

Misery was still misery.

Edited September 17, 2015 by Chanel_no5

[TheCakeIsAlive]

The origin of my misery is pollen

*giggles* I misread that without the "my", which makes it ever funnier.

Having taught a class myself, I could not help feeling a bit sympathetic. But still very appreciative of a lesson in linguistics and a sneezefic in one.

[Chanel_no5]

Having taught a class myself, I could not help feeling a bit sympathetic.

Authority ruined by allergies. I wish I had had a teacher like that back at school.

[Purple]

Oohhohohoooohhhh my, Chanel. This was lovely and wonderful in all the right (wrong? right?) ways. Yes, all the ways.

I wish I had had a teacher like that back at school.

Ahh, memories...

[Chanel_no5]

Oohhohohoooohhhh my, Chanel. This was lovely and wonderful in all the right (wrong? right?) ways. Yes, all the ways.

I wish I had had a teacher like that back at school.

Ahh, memories...

I aim to please. I'm glad you liked it!

And.... I think I might be jealous now, if you're implying that you actually had a sneezy teacher.

[Shay]

This story was great as yours usually are. I just love your grasp of intense unrelenting allergic misery.

[NoV]

One of my favourite scenarios - when it is impossible for someone to leave the room despite being faced with a relentless barrage of allergic sneezes Plus I also thought I learnt a little of linguistics from this fic which is an added bonus

[Purple]

And.... I think I might be jealous now, if you're implying that you actually had a sneezy teacher.