The Yellow Dust......

It's that time of year here in North Georgia.

The time of the yellow dust.

I wanted to take a picture of my car, which is supposed to be red, now yellow, but it's almost dark now. The car (and every other one in these here parts) is covered with a thick layer of yellow pollen.

They say (who is this "they", and why do they talk so much?) that the pollen we see on our cars isn't the pollen that aggravates our sinuses. I'm not usually bothered by pollen, since I have vasomotor rhinitis and suffer allergy-like symptoms every freakin' day of the freakin' year, but boy am I suffering today.

I foolishly opened my window-door in my classroom today so we could enjoy the nice weather. Bad move. In no time my eyes were watering, my nose was running, and I could taste the grit of pollen in my mouth.

I know I'm prone to exaggeration, but this is NOT one of those times. You can actually see yellow clouds of pollen drift across the road. I have a feeling it's going to be a Benadryl night. Please, please, please, please let me have some Benadryl in the cabinet.....

It reminds me of a funny story of one of my favorite teachers from high school. I loved him dearly and would work harder for him than any other teacher. It wasn't a crush kind of adoration, either. He wasn't cute, he was just smart. And funny. And he wouldn't let me get away with crap, so I respected him for that.

He went out to get in his car one day after school and became infuriated that someone had sprinkled yellow chalk dust all over his car. And the other teachers' cars too. This was, obviously, back in the day when teachers still used chalkboards, and someone had discovered that yellow chalk was easier on the eyes than white. Or perhaps it was cheaper, I don't know. Or maybe it was just trendy.

The poor man stormed up to the principal's office to report this act of vandalism.

Apparently he wasn't from around here. I thought they would never let the poor man live it down. Someone sent him an envelope full of chalk dust the next week and asked him to analyze it.

You see, the poor man was a science teacher.

I wonder what he's doing now.....