I was watching A Murder at the End of the World when a minor plot point was advanced through a particular condition a character had: ACHOO, or the Photic Sneeze Reflex.
when the character in question goes from light to dark, or dark to light—when they walk outside into the bright sunny day, or walk into a dark room—they will sneeze, automatically. kinda weird, right?
well, that’s ACHOO—a made-up, playful acronym for Autosomal-dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst. aka, they sneeze funny under certain circumstances.
and I was delighted, because I’d had something similar my whole life.
the most common kind of ACHOO involves light, like that character in A Murder at the End of the World. and I’ve since met friends who have this kind of ACHOO.
but I have a variant of ACHOO, which is related to temperature. if I go from a cold room to a warm room, or from warmth to cold, then I will sneeze.
I remember asking other people about it as a kid or young adult—“do U sneeze if the temperature changes?”
and they would look at me funny, like… “what the hell are U talking about? no, I don’t sneeze if the temperature changes. what’s wrong with U?”
but what was weird for them was normal for me. it’s my everyday reality. it would come up if, for example, I was at an airport, and the temperature would change suddenly, and I would sneeze reflexively—with the internal knowing that it wasn’t that I had a cold, and was a danger to other travelers, but I was just responding to the sudden presence of heat or cold.
anyways, learning about ACHOO changed my life, because it described something I’d always known about but never had a word for, didn’t have a referent to share with other people about. and now I do! hermeneutic justice! hermeneutic repair! life benefit.