Gesundheit!

(This post is long, but trust me, if you want a laugh at my expense, it's worth persevering.)

This is Solomon.
He's a 200kg Australian Sea Lion who lives at the Coffs Harbour Pet Porpoise Pool.
Before each show you can sidle on up and feed him a fish.

The smallest child in our family is the bravest one of all, she wants to be kissed by seals and dolphins, pat animals in the street and make friends with chickens.
It goes without saying she wanted to feed the seal.
By herself.

Picture from here.

When first in line I made the mistake of holding the fish for her, after all he's a seriously big sea-lion and she's a relatively small child.
Back in our seats she declared "No! Me feed seal!", when she realised she'd been ripped off.
We rejoined the queue, the last in line.

We sterilised our hands.
She took the fish and reached up.
Being too small to reach him I picked her up, we leaned in closer and without any warning at all...
Solomon did a massive sneeze all over the two of us.

I don't just mean any old sneeze.
This was a "blow-your-hair-back-and-spray-your-face-with-a-wet-combination-of-salt-water-and-fishy-smelling-saliva-filled-hurricane-like" sneeze.

There we stood, in front of the entire stand of people gathered for the performance, covered in what might best be described as seal snot.
They all roared laughing as the smallest and I tried to fathom what had just happened.
She cried, I cringed and together we used the anti-bacterial hand gel offered earlier to smother our faces, hands, arms and anything else we could.

I am eternally grateful to the lady behind us who handed me a pack of anti-bacterial wipes as I sat down with the small fish-smelling child on my lap.

We sat through the show (which is great entertainment by the way, even though I am still not sure how I feel about marine-animals being held in smallish pools)- smelling delightful.

I didn't pat or kiss her little head as I usually do when she sits on my knee, because I knew what coated each strand.

I felt thirsty but dared not lick my lips, as they had a salty tang to them.

Once the show ended and we'd moved away from the area, I bent down to retrieve somthing from my bag and the man of the house snorted down a laugh as he extracted from my hair...
a fish scale.

We went home, where I scrubbed us both in the shower with soap and shampoo to within in inch of our lives.

If anyone was in the crowd that day and has this event on video, I would urge you to send it in to "Funniest Home Videos and send me half the large sum of cash you win.

I'm going to need it for the kid's therapy.