By: Katie Borders

Opinion Editor

It’s a terrible feeling to be sitting in a movie theater, watching the “sad” scene in a movie and all of a sudden you feel that dreaded tingle in the back of your throat… an urge to cough. To refrain from coughing and being the loud sound in the movie theater that ruins the “moment,” you try to hold it in. Maybe you cover your nose and mouth, or maybe you try taking deep breaths. Nonetheless, you eyes tear up as you try with every effort to hold the cough in. You feel he restriction in your chest as you try to cut off air from your lungs, so you won’t feel that terrible sensation when you breathe in. 

Perhaps the worst time this tingle-cough fell upon me was during a choir concert my freshman year of high school. I remember sitting in the first row of the audience, watching the Women’s Choir perform a slow and harmonic song. When they reached the quietest part of the song, I had the unfortunate situation of being afflicted with the dreaded tingle-cough sensation. I felt my eyes widen like a deer caught in the headlights, and I struggled not to breathe, fearful of the air rushing in and triggering a fit of hacking coughs. The longer I held it in, the worse it got. My eyes stung with the unshed tears of embarrassment, and I tried muffling a single cough against my arm, but it only made the sensation worse. 

I made wide-eyed eye contact with a friend, sitting right next to me. To my utter embarrassment, her eyes widened in response, and she whispered, “Are you okay?” I attempted to explain that I was definitely NOT crying because of the song, but that I was actually just struggling not to cough. Tears blurred my vision as I kept trying to restrict my coughs as the choir neared the end of their performance, but to no avail. I eventually couldn’t hold the coughs in any longer, and by that time, the coughs had built up. The coughs left me in a sea of waves, and my eyes burned as I let all of my coughs out into my arm, a sad attempt at trying to muffle the hacking sound. 

To this day, I still remember that incident with embarrassment. It has to be the worst feeling when that tingling sensation occurs in your throat. And, of course, it always happens at the worst possible times: taking a test, watching the sad or meaningful part of a movie, listening to a speech, etc. It always creeps up on you when you least expect it and with the worst possible timing. And in every situation it happens, the memory of burning embarrassment and watery eyes stays with you.