Duck Down!

Yesterday, I bought two king pillows, down-filled, to replace the two standard pillows from the last millenium looking lost on our king bed, here in our little retirement condo in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania. Well, I woke up in the middle of the night sneezing. I never sneeze in my sleep. This was followed by profuse eye-watering. Thirty five years of contact lenses left me with dry eye, so why am I wetting the bed with profusion from my eyes and other facial orifices? More sneezing more completely disrupted the night with nose-blowing, coughing, throat-clearing, thereby awakening me fully to the tremendous mucous in full production.

I've used down pillows my whole life. No artificial fiber-filled ones for me. And NOW I'm allergically reacting to the new pillow. This is new. I don't have allergies, and frankly, I scorn the products that advertise hypoallergenic, 110% pure, completely inert, non-toxic, germ-free, sanitized contents, which, it seems to me, appeal only to the frail, foo foo, unrobust non-Girl-Scout types out there. This is not me. A nice big new pillow is making me weep without warning and cry without sadness! What's up with THAT?

Now that he was up, husband, Roger, pointed out the down. "The pillow is DUCK down, not goose down." Yeah. So? I was not aware there would be any big difference between the fluffy stuff of ducks and geese. And certainly not aware that Roger would know anything about duck feathers or goose down or anything growing out of a water fowl. He surprises me with his profound knowledge about the most mundane subjects. Not only that, he reads labels. I don't. That would require reading glasses while shopping, something I'm not going to do. This was the very reason I didn't know I was buying something different from my pillow purchases of the past, except for the larger size. It said duck down on the label. Didn't matter. I didn't know the different down would produce a different, violently drippy, allergic reaction. And now, I'm a member of that finicky crowd that's allergic to this and allergic to that, although I will certainly attribute it to inevitable maturity rather than advancing frailty.

Back it went to the store. No problem returning it. "What's the matter, didn't like it?" Duck down. I'm allergic to it. I told the sales lady the story of the midnight weep and wheeze after a lifetime of blissful sleep on regular goose down pillows. "This company doesn't sterilize as well as some others. You're probably allergic to all the DIRT that's in there."

Gadzooks! A dirty duck! Oh, man. I put my head on dirty duck stuff! Or was it simply that it was duck down? Will the REAL offending allergen please stand up? And whose expertise was in question here....Roger's with the duck down, or the sales lady's with the duck dirt? The quandry was worthy of no more pondering. I got a pillow with good old man-made polypropylene fill, which comes from a refinery chemical plant where I know there's no dirt or water fowl.

The most amusing aspect of the experience is that now Roger raises his arm in a face-protecting gesture and yells "duck down!" Get it?

You had to be there.