It's Allergies Hats

Ragweed peaks in the middle of September. School has been back for two weeks, which means the annual redistribution of every virus in the county is well underway, and flu season is loading behind it. And in offices, on planes and at family dinners across the country, one sentence is doing enormous work: it's allergies. Nobody believes it. It is said anyway, by a person with a fever, holding a tissue, sitting closer to you than you would like. That gap — between the claim and the evidence — is the entire joke, and it belongs to absolutely everyone, which is more than most jokes can say. So the collection commits to the denial rather than the diagnosis. IT'S ALLERGIES in heavy display type, with the kiwi-green thread of a high pollen count. I AM NOT CONTAGIOUS, asserted with a confidence no one has earned. IT'S GOING AROUND, the deadpan universal. And, in lowercase serif for the ones who have stopped fighting it: i'm fine, it's just allergies.