Chew on this. Saying "bless you" came about long ago by a number of ancient legends. One involves the mistaken belief that a person's soul might escape through a sneeze. Saying "God Bless you" wards off Satan while the soul is temporarily vulnerable. On a medical note, in an unenlightened time, people believed that the heart stopped beating during a sneeze. The offering of a "bless you" supposedly set the ol' ticker back in motion. These and a host of other silly notions exist concerning current manners surrounding sneezes, but these facts make me question the etiquette. Did you know that a sneeze travels out of your mouth at over 160 kilometers per hour?! Each sneeze can throw over 100,00 bacteria into the air! If you have a cold or the flu, just imagine how fast those germs would spread! While I understand its just a normal reflex of the body to sneeze, I think it more appropriate to bless the other people in the room! Or, better yet, getting to my main point, for the person sneezing to say "Excuse me". People say "excuse me" all the time for passing gas, yet nobody has ever been infected by foul wind. (At least not that I know of.) I'm somewhat of a germ-a-phobe, mostly in public, so these are the thoughts that creep into my mind when I'm driving or have been by myself too long. However, I still think its nice when someone wants to bless me, even if it is just for sneezing.
