humour // no. 22 theotherpress.ca ne Sa Fae TeCe ait > Students sequestered indoors as warmer weather rolls in Rebecca Peterson Humour Editor fter months of snowfall and a weather forecast with somewhat apocalyptic leanings, the Lower Mainland is finally beginning to exhibit signs of spring. “The flowers are starting to bloom, the last of the snow is almost melted, and the days are getting longer and warmer,” local weatherman John E. Storm said during a forecast. “I don’t know about all of you kids out there, but all I want to do right now is grab my bike and do a lap of the seawall, or walk along English Bay eating ice cream and having a great time with my friends!” This idealistic look at youth culture and the pleasures of early adulthood, however, fails to address Woman thinks she's dying, turns out it's just hay fever > Returns to contemplating mortality biweekly instead of hourly Caroline Ho Arts Editor young Vancouverite was relieved this past week to discover that she wasn't the carrier of a deadly infectious disease after all, but just the usual springtime sniffles. Anna Chiu, 20, had been convinced for days that she had contracted a fatal infection and her demise was surely imminent, but a consultation with her astrologist finally set her mind at ease by diagnosing her with hay fever, or some kind of allergy to pollen, or cherry blossoms, or dandelions, or exam-panicked college students, or something else related to the season; she wasn’t entirely sure. Chiu first noticed her symptoms— runny nose, sore throat, watery eyes, and a foreboding quarter-life crisis—last Thursday when her nose began to drip uncontrollably and she began to sneeze violently on the bus. She felt so physically ill that she had to ask a 35-week-pregnant woman to move from the priority seating. One witness who wished to remain anonymous described the scene of the ailing Chiu as “something out the current mentality of many young people in their late teens and early twenties: Fatalistic nihilism. “Tt’s not just about World War III breaking out; that was bound to happen anyway, and we've already written loads of humour articles about it to cope,” said student Adrian Meta. “No, it’s something far worse than that: All of us here, we're all... we're all trapped in finals season.” Indeed, rather than having a chance to enjoy the pleasant change in weather, many young adults are frantically pounding back energy drinks and cups of black coffee, burning the midnight oil—and the late-evening oil and the early-afternoon oil and even the pre-dawn oil—to finish 30-page term papers, group projects, and final exam study sessions. “T haven’t even noticed the weather,” said another student, Lina Cheung. of a B-list horror movie,” and said that fellow passengers were horrified by the risk of contagion. “She was sneezing into a tissue, like some kind of heathen,” said the witness. “Why would anyone do that when they have a perfectly good palm to sneeze into?” Eventually making it home safely, Chiu said she proceeded to spend the next three hours browsing WebMD. She was relieved to find that she apparently did not have either the bubonic plague or syphilis, although she was more than a little alarmed to discover that all of her symptoms lined up with lupus. She tried to visit a nearby doctor’s clinic the next day, but was blocked from the clinic by a crowd of loud angry Americans who were protesting the repeal of the Affordable Healthcare Act, claiming that they had “only wanted to get rid of the Obamacare parts.” The next few days of self-imposed quarantine, said Chiu, were utterly miserable. She reportedly went through 7.5 bottles of cough syrup, 23 boxes of tissues, 12 replies to casual acquaintances’ concerned texts of “How are you?” with “T think I’m dying,” and 41 melodramatic Facebook statuses that were nothing but “Quite honestly, it could be hailing fireballs that explode on impact like something out of a shitty Michael Bay movie and I wouldn't even notice. | have three lab reports, one take-home essay on Agatha Christie, and a practice Philosophy exam to chew through. I don’t think I’ve been anywhere other than this school and my house since March.” The Other Press turned to the staff of Douglas College for comment on the nice weather we've been having, only to be met with similar remarks. “How’s the weather? You think I’m paying attention to the weather?” commented Dr. Jane Kirkovich, from the department of social sciences. “Listen, I’ve got 53 essays to grade by Friday, a final exam to write, 3 cases of plagiarism to bring up with the dean, and on top of all this, I’ve got my own edgy quotes about the futility of life. Finally, in desperation, she turned to her weekly horoscope, which contained some vague platitude about being true to your emotions and getting more than five hours of sleep a night, and she realized the cause of her condition. “It was like everything suddenly made sense,” said Chiu. “It all clicked into place. The alignment of Neptune, the flowers in the gardens, the two continuous days without rain—it’s actually spring.” Two Claritin pills later and suddenly Chiu could breathe without sounding like the unholy child of a vuvuzela and a fleet of modified-muffler Harley Davidsons. Chiu said that she really should try to remember that her seasonal allergies come back every spring, instead of spending a Photo by Analyn Cuarto kids that need to be picked up from daycare in 15 minutes. So long as the weather isn’t actively trying to kill us, I really don’t give a damn what it’s doing.” Another instructor—Cordon Green, of the mathematics department—did not give the Other Press a quote, but was instead found weeping gently into a stack of unmarked term projects, which he'd hoped to have marked and passed back to the class three weeks ago. “You don’t want to miss all the fantastic memories you could be making this spring,” said Storm, to finish his weather forecast. “We probably don't have that much time left on this good green Earth anyway, given the current political climate, so go out and have fun in the sun while you can!” week each year drafting another version of her will and deliberately omitting all her friends who didn’t wish her “Happy birthday” on Facebook. But despite her self-pitying existential gloom, she admitted that there are positives to suffering from this annual ailment, as it allows her to continue griping about the weather and reasserting her status as a real Vancouverite. “T hate spring,” she said. “T wish it would snow again.”