STRANGER THAN FICTION: OTHER HALF'S ALLERGIES ARE NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT

It would appear allergy season is here again, and The Other Half isn't happy.

For him, this time of year means living with all the symptoms listed on the Ny-Quil commercial. For me, it means listening to the audible manifestations of those symptoms, plus constant whining.

No, I'm not very sympathetic. As a child, I was allergic to two things: corn syrup and dog fur. This meant my childhood was devoid of candy, and my family had only poodles because they have hair, not fur. The down side is that a child who is more than 5 feet tall at age 7 can't really do the rough-and-tumble activities usually associated with kid-dog relationships.

The true torture was getting my allergy shots. The doctor would give me a shot and leave, and then the nurse would try to give me a lollipop as a reward.

Mom always intercepted it. "She's allergic to corn syrup," she'd say.

"Ohhhhh," the nurse would reply, the pity apparent in her voice. I was The Girl Who Couldn't Have Lollipops.

Pretty soon, I figured out the good girl equals lollipop equation didn't apply to me, so why not squirm and yell a little? I wasn't getting anything, anyway!

Fortunately, those allergies were gone before my age hit the double digits, allowing me to have the life of big dogs and cellulite I always wanted.

Mr. Half's childhood was much the same, but he is allergic to plant-related stuff. Every spring and fall, like clockwork, he goes through two weeks of what appears to be a living hell. His eyes water. His nose runs. His sneezes actually shake the windows.

He spends lots of time lying flat on his back, looking at the ceiling.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"Draining," he says.

I ask him to roll over. "I can't roll over yet," he says. "My left nasal passage is clearing. I'll be able to breathe through that side in a minute!"

After several years of this -- we started dating in 1992 when it WASN'T allergy season -- I'm beginning to be a little impatient with him. Take some drugs and get over it, for heaven's sake!

I've started to picture him as the nerd kid you always see in movies. You know, the one with Coke-bottle glasses who carries inhalers in his shirt pocket. All the other kids are talking about sneaking into Old Widow Jones' back yard, and the inhaler kid goes, "I caaaaaan't! My aaaaasthma!"

Ironically, I recently saw an old friend of mine. She heard I got married and asked who it was. I told her.

"Him? I used to give him allergy shots. Most whiny kid I ever saw!" she said.

See?

The good part is that it's almost winter, and I can count on getting a sinus infection at least once every winter. Although I usually try to pop a few antibiotics, take some K-hist-D (the Kmart brand of Tavist-D -- who can afford the real stuff?) and go on with my life, not this year.

I plan to cough, sneeze and whine myself through the entire infection. And Mr. Half will be there to see it all.