I Know You Had Him Pegged For Grumpy...

When it comes to assuming a Seven Dwarf identity, Farmer H is certainly not Bashful. Nor is he Happy. He's the man who just figured out a month after buying more goats to keep Goatrude company, "Goats are herd animals! Goatrude doesn't even know I exist now. All she cares about are those other goats!" So I'm not confident in his scientific knowledge and in no way consider calling him Doc. Since Farmer H gets a full nine hours of shut-eye each night, I do not think of him as Sleepy. And while Dopey and Grumpy describe him most of the time, it's Sneezy that drives me crazy.

Farmer H is a serial sneezer. No dainty "aaaa...aaaa...achoo!" for him. Nope. It's "ihh...ihh...ihh...P-P-P-PHEEWWWSH! That P-P-P business is his plush Angelina-Jolie-lips motorboating before spraying his nasal secretions out his mouth. Than man is like an industrial-strength humidifier. Not emitting a fine mist, either. More like when my grandpa used to water his knee-high tulip trees on a hot summer evening with his green garden hose, and put his thumb over the end to douse me with a rainbow of sparkling drops.

Farmer H seems to save these episodes for the car. Not a single sneeze, not two, not three. We once counted 25, though he denies it. The last instance was a week ago, when we went to the catfish restaurant and had a frozen yogurt cone on the way home. Thing is, you never know how high the total will go. It's like waiting for the other shoe to drop. From a centipede's foot.

HM: "Stop with the sneezing already!"

Farmer H: "I can't stop. I can't control it. Ihh...ihh...ihh...P-P-P-PHEEWWWSH! SCHNIIIFFFF."

HM: "Stop snorting it back in! Don't you get it? A sneeze happens because your body wants to get something OUT of its nasal cavity! Why, why, WHY do you always snort it back up in your nose?"

Farmer H: "What do you want me to do, let it run down my lip and into my mouth?"

HM: "Noooo. You already got it out. So it should stay out. Not get sucked back up into your nose. Then you have to sneeze it out again! How can you not understand that?"

Farmer H: "I don't know what you want me to do. I can't help it."

HM: "Yes you can. You blow your nose like a normal person."

Farmer H: "How am I supposed to do that?"

HM: "Now that you've inhaled your ice cream cone, you can use that stack of napkins right there to blow your nose."

Farmer H: "That wouldn't be safe while I'm driving."

HM: "WHAT? It's way safer than closing your eyes twenty-five times while you're driving with one eye and sweaving and don't have the use of the passenger-side mirror!"

Farmer H: "I don't close my eyes."

HM: "Every time you sneeze, you close your eyes."

Farmer H: "No I don't."

The Pony: "Actually, it's a proven fact that a person always closes their eyes when they sneeze. The MythBusters tested it. You can't argue on this one, Dad."

Farmer H: "Ihh...ihh...ihh...P-P-P-PHEEWWWSH!"

HM: "Here! Blow! That's thirteen."

Farmer H: "SNORFFFFFF. That's twelve."

HM: "I think I can count to thirteen."

Farmer H: "I think I can count to twelve."

Sometimes, there's no reasoning with that man. But let the record show, after blowing his nose, there was not another sneeze. The thirteenth was the last. This time.