Hiccups are simply the worst. This is no recent discovery of mine, but I've a mind to share with the world the pure injustice of their existence. They are, by far, my least-favorite bodily function. Not that I sit around rating my affection for bodily functions on a daily basis. Or on an ever-basis. "Let's see, sneezing ranks #1..." (Though I do rather enjoy a good sneeze.) Nonetheless, hiccups are a never-splendored thing. I am always rudely surprised by how truly unpleasant they are when they creep up into my life and up into my throat like a confused baby bee who is trying to escape from Hell. Every time, I feel as though I'm an infant who is having them for the first time, and I become shocked, perplexed and amazed. I may even cry a little. But if getting hiccups alone isn't bad enough, getting them at inopportune moments just compounds your miserable state of hiccupitude and leaves you whimpering softly, wondering if anyone will ever love you with your stupid, stupid body and its inability to stifle these ugly, unwanted esophogeal anomalies. Obviously, this thought gives me no choice but to drum up a list of the top inopportune moments to have hiccups. Are you ready? Let us begin!
1. The shower. Have you ever had hiccups in the shower? What is normally a wonderful sound studio for singing that makes you start seriously considering your career in singing, it does not bode well for the hiccuper. Adding insult to injury, it relentlessly magnifies the sound so that it reverberates across town, leaving bystanders to wonder if you need medical assistance or if you've just been eating the soap. Though if you have bystanders surrounding you during your shower, you should probably figure out why that is.
2. In class. Ah, college! Trying to find onesself, grappling with one's supposed adulthood, etc. It would be in your best interest to focus in class and maybe even try to get asked out on a date like you promised your mom you would because you said you would try harder to be more pleasant and less obscure and all the things that "college girls" are supposed to be. But these dreams are squashed when madness erupts in anthropology, and all you can focus on is stifling your hiccups and trying not to explode and spray green tea all over your classmates as the clock ticks by in slow motion to the tune of the ancient professor discussing with glee mating rituals of the Yanomamo in Venezuela. Speaking of mating rituals...
3. While "making out" (or whatever you kids are calling it these days!) The unpleasantness of this one should be pretty obvious. It has not happened to me, thankfully. And as a person of singlitude, I will have to trust that it would, in fact, make for an awkward moment. What would one do in this situation? "Pardon me a moment, darling, for I must hold my breath for a short while until I pass out on the coffee table. May we please resume our activity when my unbecoming inner turbulence has subsided forthwith?"
4. On that note, any kind of romance-y times. Here is some possible dialogue:
"Hey, baby, I'ma get all up in your grill with the romance and stuff. You dig? Let me put on my sexy pants and we'll go out to Burger King."
"Oh, Jerome, you know I love when you talk Burger King!! I would love to go on a fancy date with you. I'll wear all the latest styles! Your braces are so sexy, they make me want to dance. I'ma go get ready and -HICCUP!!"
----Romantic moment ruined; Jerome leaves, never to return.----
5. While eating. You instantly feel like a drunken, buffoonish glutton when you start hiccuping in the middle of eating something. You could be eating a single lettuce leaf, but you instantly feel like the most slovenly, piggish person in the world and begin to immediately reconsider your dietary habits. "Maybe I should eat half a lettuce leaf next time? Maybe just stick to water from now on? Maybe I shouldn't eat while hanging upside-down off the couch? I dunno."
6. Have you ever yawned and hiccuped at the same time? It is pure insanity. It's like your throat is trying to swallow your brain. It's like your esophagus and uvula are trying to simultaneously strangle and marry eachother in a waltz/battle of throat-related body parts. No one is winning, and you are the battlefield. (Unrelated: love is a battlefield, so says Pat Benatar.)
7. Bedtime. You just want to sleep. That's all you ask. But instead, you just lie there, hic'ing into a dark void of despair. "No, you cannot sleep! I'm going to send your body into awkward gyrations instead and make you dream that your cat is your boyfriend/grandmother!" say the hiccups. "Sleep is naught but a myth! Feel my wrath, peasant!"
8. Trying to sing. As a bashful singer who relishes any bit of precious alone-time to be used for clandestine singing, such an unwelcome interruption is infuriating. Especially if you have the temperament of a classically-trained soprano. Not that I do. (Okay, I do.)
9. In church, on the job, or at a funeral. During: Prayer. Meditation. Litany. Important business meeting with Distinguished Business Man. Heartfelt eulogies. These just go without saying. Mostly because I'm too lazy to keep writing. (I think my verbosity has met its match for the day.)
The end.
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