Grab a chair and a couple of root beers...

Okay, I can't leave y'all hanging and thinking my asthma has been nothing but a misery to me.  I mean, I've had funny moments, too.  Like during the first year after I was diagnosed, when I was so allergic to EVERYTHING that I had to wear a face mask everytime I wanted to go outside.  I HATED that, but... sometimes, there were funny moments.  Like when my nephew, who was 11 at the time, snatched my mask away from me and hid in his room with it for ten minutes, then came back with it and handed it to me, a big grin on his face.  I fell apart laughing when I looked at it, because he'd turned me into Optimus Prime.  Of course, the marker fumes pretty much made me pass out, but I appreciated his gesture.  After that, he used crayons, because he hated how... WHITE those things were, and oh, wasn't he embarrassed to be seen with me when I had to wear one!  Heck, I didn't want to be seen with me when I had to wear one!


Or the same stupid joke the Husbandly One would tell me when things got really bad.  As long as I could laugh about it, I could bear it, so he would get in front of me and make me stare into his eyes, and he would say, "Okay, so there's this blind guy, and he walks into a department store with his guide dog."

"Oh, no," I would say, trying to groan, but unable to because...well... I couldn't breathe, right?  Totally captive audience.

"And after a minute, he picks his dog up and starts whirling it over his head at the end of the leash..."

"No, please stop!" I would gasp, but those blue eyes would just twinkle, and I knew he was going to do it again.

"The clerks are all horrified and they run up, shouting, "sir, sir, what are you doing?"..."

"Augh... stop..." I would protest weakly.

"And he'd say... don't mind me, I'm just looking around..."

And I'd fall apart laughing and coughing my lungs up, but feeling much better.  He got the idea after my best friend told him about how her sister's boyfriend would tell her the same damn joke and she would laugh every single time.  Just like I did.

And yeah, he told that same joke to me when I was in labor, but... it didn't work.  I had already told the doctor that if he said, "push it out, push it out, WAAAAAY out," she was to have him escorted firmly from the room and confined elsewhere.  When he told me that joke, I said, "If he tells that joke again, give him a paper cut and pour lemon juice on it."

She laughed.

However, I have to say the funniest thing that ever happened to me, because of my asthma, wasn't funny at the time.  It was embarrassing.  But later, when I thought about it, I realized it was extremely funny.  

I had just started a new inhaled medication called "Azmacort."  I don't know if they still make it.  It was an inhaled steroid, and I didn't take it long, because it made my throat swell up.  This is not good if your goal is to be able to actually breathe.  Anyways, it came in this white foldy-out sort of combination of inhaler and spacer, which is like this cylinder that holds the medicine until you're ready to breathe it in.  It looked very... odd, complicated, and I used to call it my "Rube Goldberg inhaler."  And the thing about this particular medication was, I had to take it at specifically timed intervals.  Like... every four and a half hours.  I HATED it.  I was still new to having asthma, and hated using my inhalers in front of people, because while most people had the usual politely looking away reaction, there were others who would stare and ask extremely bizarre questions.  Like how many shots could I take before I passed out? Does it taste good?  If I kissed you, could I taste it, and would I get buzzed, too?  Can I have a hit?  Why are you using that, you're not wheezing?  and on and on and on.  

So, one afternoon, I had taken my mother for an eye appointment.  And while we were sitting in the waiting room, waiting for her eyes to dilate, my watch beeped, and I knew it was time for me to use my inhaler.  I looked around the crowded waiting room and told my mother that I was going to use it in the privacy of the women's restroom.  She rolled her eyes, but patted my hand and told me to do what I needed to do.  So, I trotted off to the rest room and found it empty.  I thought.  I had unfolded the damn white monster and was blowing out a breath, preparing to use it, when a stall door opened and a woman came out with her little daughter clutching her hand.  She stopped and stared at me as I inhaled the medicine (because I was committed and had to just do it at that point), and I couldn't speak to her, because I was supposed to hold my breath for 30 seconds after inhaling and wait.  She went white, clapped her hand over her child's eyes, and rushed out.  I  was so relieved, and checked my watch to wait the three minutes before I could take the second dose.  Just as I was inhaling for the second time, the door burst open and the woman was back, sans child, but she wasn't alone.  She had a MAN with her!  A big BURLY man in a uniform.  A security guard.  As I stood there, desperately holding my breath and wondering just what the hell was going on, she pointed her finger at me and said, "There!  See!  She's doing it right out where you can see it!  She's SMOKING CRACK!!"

My mouth fell open, and I started coughing, because I WANTED to laugh, but I couldn't, because I couldn't BREATHE.  

The security guard frowned and looked at me, looked at my inhaler, and looked back at the woman.  "She's doing WHAT??" he said with that I-can't-believe-you-so-white-bread look only inner city kids (like me) get when we're confronted with such blatant... er... stupidity??

"She's SMOKING CRACK!!" the woman said semi-hysterically.  "She did it RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY DAUGHTER!!"

"Lady," he said patiently, taking my inhaler and pulling the little canister out of it.  "This... is an inhaler."

"Yes, yes, because she's INHALING CRACK!!"

"No, she's inhaling asthma medicine!  She's an asthmatic not a crack addict!!"  He shook his head and handed my inhaler and medicine canister back to me and turned back to her.  I won't bother to include what he said here, but it was to the point and rude and made her huff and flounce away indignantly with a threat to tell his supervisor, and he said, "yeah, you do that."

Meanwhile, I noticed we had acquired rather a large audience.  Apparently, she had gone screaming down the hall about the crack addict in the women's restroom on her way to security or whatever, and when I came out, well...it was hugely embarrassing.  However, they weren't looking at me, necessarily, they were peering over me to see if they could see the crack addict who was obviously still in the restroom.  Apparently, I was too well dressed for their idea of a crack addict.  Shows what they knew, doesn't it?

It took a while before I was able to see the humor in that, but now, I laugh heartily when I think about it.  I guess I should mention that this happened in 1990.  And she was very much an upper class white suburban mom.  Apparently, to her, all college students (which I was, and even worse, I was an ART student, and had multiple earrings and the whole shebang) were potential drug addicts.  

I've had other adventures where my asthma is concerned, but I think that's probably one of the funniest.  Even funnier than the time I was on a nebulizer and my best friend started laughing heartily and said, "That mask makes you look like a dragon with smoke curling out of your nostrils."

Fun times, I'm telling you!