When I was six years old I decided to hold a sneeze in, instead of letting it out in all its fury. I did this out of concern for others, of course, for my last sneeze had destroyed houses and toppled trees for over a kilometer in the direction of the sneeze.

I should have known better, of course, but I WAS only six years old. In fact, I had just gotten a pair of toy spurs for my birthday and I wore them everywhere. I loved those spurs and would have worn them to school and church if I could have. As it was, I wore them to the doctor's office (on my little cowboy boots, of course) and one of the nurses literally flung herself at me because, it turned out, boots and spurs excited her. Being six years old I had no idea of what was going on, of why she was panting and had her blouse unbuttoned and why she kept asking me for my "quirt." But that is all beside the issue under discussion, whatever it was.

Oh, yeah. The time I held in a sneeze.

Well, I knew that I couldn't destroy half the town a second time and have it again blamed on a freak tornado. So when I felt the sneeze coming on I wrapped my head in yards and yards of old sails we happened to have (why we had these sails is another story). Since they were of heavy sailcloth I assumed that they would contain the sneeze quite handily. Boy! was I wrong.

But first of all some older ladies with bluish hair who wore white gloves whenever they were outside saw me and kept asking me questions like "How do you achieve Oneness, O Holy One?" and "Aren't you sort of short for a Swami?" Eventually it dawned upon me that they thought I was some sort of turbaned religious leader, like the snake charmer in the cartoon I'd seen the previous weekend, and I felt that I couldn't disappoint them, so I replied, "MMmph. Onmmmph, mmph" because my head was wrapped in all that sailcloth. The ladies must have thought it was pretty profound and they all went off and joined a religious group in India where they practiced an exotic religion called, I think, "Thugee."

Eventually, however, the Sneeze came. I could feel it building up and up until, finally, it could no longer be contained. I knew, though, that the sailcloth would hold it in and no damage would be done.

I was wrong.

The force of the sneeze shredded the sailcloth and blew it into the air. This wasn't all bad, except for the pieces the were drawn into a jet fighter's engine and caused it to crash but the pilot got out okay and the plane crashed into Flat Mountain, the highest mountain in Illinois, rising seventeen feet over the fields of corn. The rest of the shredded sailcloth drifted over downtown, gently falling on a parade honoring the local bowling team.

So it all worked out okay, except that I gave everyone who was downtown for the parade a nasty cold.

So don't use a towel. There really is nothing that will contain a sneeze.