Hot Tamale!

Evan has recently developed a love of boogers. I understand that this is probably a normal developmental stage, so am trying not to be bothered by it. But, if you come upon him unsuspected, most likely he’ll be mining for gold. Photographic evidence has been gathered, and the “should we do anything about it?” parental discussions have been had. While trying to decide what measures, if any, should be taken, especially as he engages in nostril-diving in line at the store, I can’t help but remember some experiences from my own youth that correlate with the subject. My siblings and I occasionally participated in booger-flicking wars, at a much more mature age than Evan’s tender 3 ½ years. My father even liked to pretend to flick them at us to elicit horrified screams. Such playful shenanigans help me to relax a bit, especially when Evan finds a particularly juicy one while we’re in the vegetable aisle.

My younger sister Amy, to her credit, never participated in such juvenile tactics as mentioned above. However, she did have a penchant for sticking things up her nose, and while this behavior is normally “just a phase” that some children go through, she persisted in lodging things up her nostrils well into high school. For Amy, nasal embedment wasn’t always the goal; in fact, one of her favorite things to do was to take the ends of jacket strings, creep them up into the nasal cavity, and wiggle them around just enough to make herself sneeze. Her only rationale for such strange behavior was, “sneezing feels good.”

One priceless nasal-lodging incident occurred on a family road trip across the long and scenery-deprived Nebraska. On this particular trip, Dad was in “adventure” mode, which for him, meant going off the beaten track in search of small streams and tributaries of which to take endless photos, while attempting to engage his children in sophisticated sedimentation discussions. This particular excursion took us hours off of the straight-shot home-- fed up, we children vocally registered our boredom and disgruntlement. The four of us even made a sign: “I’m bored,” and every time we passed another car, we flashed the sign and pulled our best tortured faces. Soon enough even that got old, and we shifted into hyper-silly mode. At this point, Amy’s nasal propensities kicked into high gear. She started putting random things up her nose, then making faces, sending the rest of us into hysterics. All was giggles and kicks until a box of Hot Tamales candy surfaced. Not even hesitating, she doubled up, putting one in each nostril, pulling a distorted face. The rest of us were laughing heartily when Amy’s face turned into true despair and she screamed, “It burns! They burn!” The offensive and spicy hot tamales were removed, but the burning persisted for a good while longer.

Now, logic would conclude that Amy had learned of the dangers of sticking candy up her nose, and therefore would never repeat the act. Not so. Several years later, Amy approached me after school, obviously distressed; upon close inspection, there was a thin stream of blue oozing out of one nostril. Horrified, I thought that she had some sort of funky bloody nose, my visions of “blue blood” stemming from a cheap vampire flick I saw once where the vampires didn’t bleed red, but blue. Although pretty sure my sister wasn’t a vampire, I experienced a brief flicker of doubt until Amy whispered, “It’s a blue peanut M&M. It’s stuck. Help!” Not sure what she wanted me to do, I ushered her into the girls’ bathroom. Further investigation revealed that it was too far up to fish out, and posed a serious snort-an-M&M-into-the-brain threat. Amidst baffled inquiries of the “What, are you 5 years old? Why do you keep sticking things up your nose?” variety, I encouraged her to inhale through her mouth so as to not blow out an eyeball with the M&M as a result of hysterical gasping, and then pinch off the other nostril and attempt to snort the intruder out into the sink. Next followed a combination of really messy blue snot-shots, nasally whimpers of “ow! ow! ow! ow! ow!”, and me stifling laughter while she hunkered over the sink, lunging forward with each attempted dislodgment. After several really good tries, the M&M was still housed in Amy’s nose, and apparently setting up permanent residence. I mused over the possibility of simple disintegration over time; however, the advertised “won’t melt in your hand” factor led me to wonder just exactly how long that process would take. The blue shell was definitely well on its way, considering the state of the sink. With a disgruntled sigh, I decided, “All right, all right! I’m going to go see if I can’t rustle up a toothpick, or maybe a pair of tweezers—maybe then we can leverage the candy out.” Gratefully, I didn’t meet anyone I knew in the halls as I searched; I couldn’t really imagine a concise answer to the phrase, “Hey, what’s up? Where you headed?” that wouldn’t prompt the inquirer to make a mental note-to-self to avoid those crazy Hotchkiss sisters...I was mulling this over when Amy herself rushed up and declared triumphantly, “I got it! It came out!” Her eyes were watering, the right nostril was inflamed and ringed in blue, but, there was no more M&M. A couple hours of blue-tinged drainage, and she was good as new.

Despite such antics in our youth, the Hotchkiss siblings have turned out to be fully-functioning members of society, making mature decisions on a daily basis. This gives me hope for my children, and helps me to relax and enjoy the journey, even if it is filled with the occasional pit-stop for nasal cleanings.