Blush Case

BLUSH

It was a normal Monday morning except that I was busy rushing my assignment. I was seated in the front row of a room filled with students playing, chatting and likewise, rushing his/her own assignment.

"Hi!" somebody said shyly and lowly that I didn't even bother to raise my head to look who it was. "Can I borrow a pen?" he continued. "I don't have one" I answered annoyingly. "But you are holding one" he answered back.

By that time, I raised my head and as I was about to answer him, I stopped for a moment and just ponder, like watching a leaf falls down from a tree.

When I saw who it was, it's like a rush. It's like a tide coming in. I can feel the temperature in my cheeks get warm. I felt blood rushing to my face.

My confused state of mind acts upon my sympathetic nervous system. From there, the vasodilators are stimulated which causes the peripheral capillaries to expand. As a result, more blood flows to the surface of the face and neck, resulting in the reddening of the face and neck - that is the physical process involved in what just had happened to me. It is the most atypical and the most human expression that even the famous man behind the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin struggles to explain. While all animals - other primates included - do not, all people of all races does, they blush.

A person can, in fact, blush when alone if he thinks about or read something that is embarrassing to him and when he is in an indecent or immodest occurrence, an awkward situation, a foolish blunder, or even when praised that makes him stand out. We cannot control when and how often we blush. Nor should we want to. It is one of those unique characteristics that make us human. These facts, then, continue to confound those who attempt to explain this phenomenon. Even if we understand the physical process involved, the psychology of blushing as to why it happens or what function it serves remains vague.

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