Thursday, November 20, 2008

Boogers and picking: a spectator sport?

I am looking out the window at a beefy woman putting up a newspaper delivery box on the property next door this morning - oooops she was just swinging a BIG hammer at the stake and has now missed and dropped it - twice. Wait, No, three times. Then she faced my office window and picked her nose. ON MAIN STREET. With cars and people driving right by. With planes flying overhead. And with nosey (LOL) neighbors like me, looking out the window.

What is it about nose picking, which apparently is a cross-cultural, uni-sex, non-age-discriminating pasttime?

My BFF Trudy is a children's librarian and she has to threaten kids with their lives if they don't get their dirty little fingers out of their noses while reading and turning the pages......yuk.
A teacher at one of our local schools has a reputation for picking and then storing his mined treasures behind his ear. What the hell is he saving it for? DO INQUIRING MINDS REALLY WANT TO KNOW?
And what about driving on the Interstate? Doesn't it seem that nose picking is sort of the official sport of highway driving? No wonder the toll takers wear latex gloves...
And then there is the infamous farmers' blow, which entails putting a finger on one side of a very runny nose, taking a deep breath and then SHOOTING the snot out of the other nostril. Of course, this maneuver is following by a cleansing wipe on the arm of the shirt - or back of a glove - or cuff of a jacket. This seems to work best with an audience.

(Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, I am hereby reluctantly admitting that I have done the farmers' blow myself while hiking. Sorry.)

Okay, as long as we are coming clean, here is a pathetic admission: One of my children - the perpetrator will not fess up - used to hide boogers under the arm of the sofa. How ultimately despicable and disgusting! My children are all adults now, with their own homes. I wonder if I surreptitiously check each of their sofas I could find the boogey man (or woman) still in operation...

You will not believe this: Wiki says nose picking "is an extremely common habit, with some surveys indicating that it is almost universal, with people picking their nose an average of about four times a day.'' FOUR TIMES A DAY! It even has an official name: rhinotillexis. Two people who responded to a 1995 survey of 1,000 adults claimed to spend between 15 to 30 minutes and one to two hours a day picking their nose (ARE YOU KIDDING ME? TWO HOURS? WOULDN'T THEIR HAND FALL ASLEEP?) and there is a video on YouTube of George Bush picking his nose. Somehow that doesn't really surprise me....

Un-freaking-believable.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. Slow news day?

Anonymous said...

Flicking boogers in public is in pretty bad taste - especially if your aim is poor.

On the other hand, look at the Major League ballplayers adjusting their jockstraps on nationally-televised games.

Great blog. And yep, there is such a thing as a slow news day.

Queenie said...

Actually, I have the day off - miraculous, huh?

Anonymous said...

It wasn't me!! BUT...I have done the farmer's blow while playing sports and picked occasionally!! However, I think if it was completely wrong to do then our fingers wouldn't fit so perfectly up there, right?!! -jenny

Queenie said...

Okay, we've cleared one child - Jenny - of putting the boogers on the couch. Five more to go...