I've gone from saying "bless you" (because that's what grown-ups say when I sneeze) to saying "excuse you" (because blessings are religious and religion is ICKY!!!!!) to saying "'scuse you" (because I want to seem less formal) and now I'm back to "bless you" (because if I am spending time around you, I most likely care a lot about you and I do hope you are, in some sense of the word, blessed. I hope you are fortunate in ways that can only be explained by divine intervention or extraordinary statistical improbability. And while this may not be the most appropriate time, as you desperately look around for tissues with your hands still clutched around your face, I will nevertheless take the fleeting opportunity that our social contract presents me with)
there she is
- she/her
- binarypartitioned.space/
— hitscanner apologist ⚡
— tired trans woman ⚧️☣
— not always grumpy, she just looks like that 💀
— level/environment designer 🔨
— Current work: Skin Deep (at Blendo Games) 🐈
📍 Adelaide, Australia
Private page (for friends): @garbagegrenade
in reply to @trashbang's post:
i have historically never said bless you but i’ve been saying it every time to my baby just cause like
on the off chance it does mean something i don’t want them to go to hell bc i was a bad parent
But what if Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be and it turns out your kid would rather go there?
i mean if they want to go there i’m sure they’ll make the life choices required to do without my help
In German we say "Gesundheit" which just means "health", presumably short for "I wish you good/better health" or something, no idea about the exact origin.
Anyway, I think you can say "Gesundheit" in English, too, at least I've seen it in a Garfield cartoon once (https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/1985/09/28).
It definitely gets used enough to be common knowledge, at least in the US.
I swapped over to saying it over "bless you" a while back. Feels more accurate to what I actually wish for them, which is good health regardless of any theological implications.
I married a latina who grew up in Spain so in our house its salud (health) on the first sneeze, dinero (money) on the second, and amor (love) when there's a third.