So, if last week's vitriolic column wasn't enough - and it started out trying to be funny, honest - if it wasn't enough to cut my chances with future potential employers in half - and, for the convenience of those employers reading this on a Google cache five years in the future, my real name is Bill Larsen, and I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan - this week's column will surely cut those chances in half yet again.
Boogers.
Some folks call 'em 'bogeys', but that just sounds silly to me. I could never call them 'bogeys'. I think that boogers are first experienced at such a young, formative age that the vernacular of boogers is tied in to a whole series of unremembered yet deeply-rooted beliefs and emotions, like how we feel about fairness, or death, or our family members. Boogers and parents - you've had them from the start, and inside you may not remember why but you'll always feel about them the way you did when you were five.
Me, I like 'em. Boogers and parents both. There's nothing like getting in to work at seven-thirty on a groggy Monday morning - much like, say, today - after an hour long commute, sitting down at your desk, and isolating and dragging out a nice solid chunk of nose-gold.
Morning boogers are the best - they've had all night to dry out in those wind tunnels you call nostrils, and are nice and firm. They can be too hard - sometimes they are crusty enough to have sharp points, and no one likes that. But just a shade softer and they are perfect, satisfyingly solid under your fingernail, adhesive enough to stick papers to your desk.
That was a joke. You'd need several boogers to make a Post-it note. (A team effort could work.) Sadly, my boogers live a transitory life. The ripening in the nostril, the picking, that brief glorious moment of being admired, and then into the wastebasket. Those too sticky to flick get wiped off on something disposable and then go into the bin. I don't keep them around. There will, after all, be more along shortly.
I recall, as a kid, being informed of people who ate their boogers. Frankly, I can't logically believe that, but the five-year-old in me recalls being told it as a fact, so I can't disbelieve it either. If you have any first-hand experience with booger eating, do let me know.
I'm not sure where I fall on the nose-picking frequency scale; there is a sad dearth of statistical data on nose-picking. You'd think that at least some social scientists would address the problem. I'd say on average I probe the ol' nostrils maybe three times a day. Is that typical? Less than average? Disgusting? Who can say. Not you, so shut up. Nose-picker.
The morning boogers are, as I say, the best. Sometimes you'll get a good one in the afternoon, but usually that stuck-in-afternoon-traffic pick nets you only some sticky semi-soft stuff, and that's no good. Not only is it not as satisfying to roll around between your fingertips, where do you put it if it's too soft and sticky to fling out the window? I usually swipe it under my shoe, just in front of the heel; the lawn takes care of it later.
So soft boogers just aren't as good. And then there are anchored boogers. One thing that five-year-old me didn't have to deal with was nose hair. Sometimes a booger will crust itself around some nose hair, and then digging it out becomes a tear-jerking experience. Satisfying, in a masochistic way, but often excruciatingly painful. Still, what are you gonna do? Just leave it there? That way lies madness. Once a booger has been identified, it must be removed.
Worse still are the boogers that slip back up into your sinuses and disappear. You know what I mean - every now and then a booger will be in just the wrong place, and as you go to pick it instead of lodging under your fingernail like you meant it to, it goes the other way and shoves off back up inside your head. And then you can't find it. It's gone. You probe and wiggle and maybe even break out the pinky, but there's no booger there.
You never find it again.
I just hope those lost boogers aren't collecting somewhere, some unused corner of my skull, where they are building up and pushing on my brain unt
- Sun Ra