Hello, Welcome. I’m Renée Valentina and this is Musing Interruptus. Musing Interruptus is a podcast for sharing thoughts and stories and enjoying idiomatic phrases and words. You can read along; the transcription is in the description of this episode. The idiomatic expressions are in italics. Try to get the meaning from the context and then look them up to see if you were right. If you like it, share it, but more importantly, continue the conversation. The background music is called Slimheart by Blue Dot.
Today, That's Hard To Believe
A man walks into a bank and sneezes at the very moment a robber was pulling out a gun with the intention of pulling a heist. There are many things about this case that are hard to believe. For one thing, the sneezing man was known for having the loudest sneeze around, in three counties, no less. He won this contest without even entering it. The year was 1994, he was turning 21 that September. Still a month away from legally having a drink, which made getting his hands on liquor and beer part of the fun and the stories he would one day tell around a table with his closest friends. The stories about testing limits and proving that laws were there for the less intellectually adept would keep their attention in their 30s and 40s. The sneezing contest was held every year at the county fair. The day Steve -the sneeze- went to the fair with his friends, it was dusty and windy. He was buying his tickets when he got a whiff of dust up the old schnoz. They say his sneeze was heard all the way on the stage where they were holding the sneezing competition, a whole 3 km away. It was so loud it boomed off the booths and the Ferris wheel passenger cars. I’m no physicist or acoustics engineer, so I can’t explain what happened. Probably a combination of the Doppler effect and lots of dust for some. His friends were used to his enthusiastic sneezing. However, the rest of the world wasn’t. For seconds, the whole fair fell silent, wondering if it wasn’t something they should be worried about. That’s when a booming voice from the stage killed the silence by announcing the de facto winner of this year’s sneezing contest. Please, could the person who just sneezed approach the stage. You’ve silenced these grounds, it is fair to say, your sneeze is the loudest sneeze. This guy has some luck when it comes to making an entrance. 
Back to the present, 30 years later, walking into the bank at the very moment a robber was pulling his gun. Steve the sneeze had an urge he could not deny himself, and sneezed, loudly and what was soon to become his next epic story. The robber, shuddered, squealed, and released the gun through the air. The gun fell on a ladies’ head, knocking her out, cold, instantly. Lucky for her, when she was rushed to the hospital, the attending ordered an MRI and they detected a brain infection in her occipital lobe. She had struggled with remembering people’s faces, but was too ashamed to tell anyone, thinking it was just a sign of times, her times, a sign of aging. She wouldn’t have told anyone, if it weren’t for that errant gun, she might have gone undiagnosed and fallen into a coma. Prosopagnosia was a word she would become familiar with. She would never take her memory for granted again. 
Back at the bank, Steve’s harrowing sneeze had interrupted a robber and saved a lady’s life. This time, he wouldn’t get a prize for being so noisy. A life supply of money was not out of the question if you ask me. A fortunate chain of events detonated by an obnoxiously loud sneeze. The old lady would never know what or who was behind the konk on her head, and the robber had a heart attack which led to post-traumatic amnesia. That gave him a new lease on life. He went back to school and learned how to set up hedge funds... Continue reading