Disclosure: Don't read this while you are eating or if you have eaten recently. This may not be for the weak of digestion or the easily appalled. I aim to gross out.
I remember a Joan Rivers joke from her late night days. You remember her? "Oh, oh oh oh, please" I have to find a link to this joke, but for now it went something like, and I paraphrase: My young daughter was eating something, a piece of meat or maybe fruit and she suddenly said, "Mommy I don't like this I'm going to spit it out". But instead I said, its OK darling you don't have to eat it and I took it from her mouth, she spit it into my hand and I put it in my mouth and finished it. Only a Mother of a child can do that. Or perhaps a Father.
I went to the Mother of God pharmacy to get some medicines. No joke, that's the name of the pharmacy. I wonder if it will become a chain? Somebody would complain. Well, needless to say, its a local pharmacy. My wife has a discount card from it and its just down the street from our apartment, so its convenient. I wonder what the Catholic Church would have to say about that? Mother of God giving discounts.
My daughter has had a snuffed runny nose for over a month now. What is up with that? Its the end of May, beginning of June and the warm weather has finally entrenched itself, but she still has double barrel green snots running out of her nose every ten to fifteen minutes. I thought it was allergies but my wife says if it was allergies it would be clear and watery. This mucous is thicker than Heinz ketchup and it pours just as slowly. So sometimes I see this stuff coming out and I say to myself, I got a couple more minutes before it runs into her mouth, lets finish this puzzle first then I ll tell her to blow her nose. And she never feels it herself. I always have to tell her to go blow her nose. You would think that big gobs sitting below her nose would be felt. But what do I know? Rasputin had all kinds of food and tidbits sitting in his beard, he didn't know or didn't care. Or both.
But you know what? It really doesn't bother me. Its like the Joan Rivers joke. She could take the food from her daughters mouth and eat it herself and it didn't bother her. I just calmly tell her to go blow her nose, the stuff is just about on her lip. It really doesn't gross me out. Maybe its from my DNA so I feel akin to it. Something like that, I don't know. Something like your own farts never smell bad to you.
Her pre school teacher politely asked us to do something about it as soon as possible and in the mean time to keep her at home. She said kindly to my wife one afternoon that she (the teacher)had to run to the bathroom because she was going to throw up. She was nauseous for the rest of the afternoon. This is a teacher who has to put up with ten to twenty running noses a day. I kind of was getting proud of my daughters condition. Wow, she grossed out a pre school teacher. I mean that has got to be hard to do. My daughter should get some sort of an award, "was able to gross out the teacher" award. Then again it might not do well for my daughter`s reputation, unless she was in high school already.
So last week my wife took my daughter to the clinic to get it checked out. Now there are people you can`t gross out. They work with entrails from every orifice very professionally. Kind of like embalmers working with cadavers. Not phased one bit. So they took a sample. They told her to blow her nose and then put a sample on one of those little wooden sticks and then on the slide. Doctors are pretty awesome that way. They don't bat a lash, blink an eye, all in the days work.
A friend was visiting for a couple days and staying with us in the apartment. A pretty tough guy. A journalist who has had gang members in Albania stick a gun to his head and say get out of here or we will blow you are out of here. He was embedded in some units in Iraq. He has seen land mines blow up taking body parts with it. So he said. Comes breakfast and I am sitting across from my daughter who is drinking her breakfast tea and eating a kids yogurt snack. I look up casually from my cup of tea and notice a slow moving green sludge making its way out of her nose. Ah, I got a couple minutes, let her drink her tea. My friend pours himself a cup of tea and sees my daughter. His eyes are riveted on this green monster oozing like a snail out of her nose. He can`t take his eyes off of it.
SUDDENLY, a sneeze. I look up at her and see the sewage go flying from her nose direct dunk into her tea cup.
"Awesome, little girl. That was some great basketball you hooped there. That was really a fantastic shot," I said. She smiled and looked proud.
I heard a gagging behind me and my friend just had time to put his tea down on the counter and run to the bathroom and then I heard a loud retching sound.
Now what was that all about? I went to the bathroom. "Are you all right?", I asked my friend. He looked up at me from the floor of the toilet room with bloodshot eyes. The smell of last nights dinner repackaged was starting to waft out of the little room. "That was the grossest thing I have ever seen".
Huh? Off the record, do you think my friend was lying about seeing all that action as a journalist? Maybe he didn't get out of the green zone in Iraq, pun intended. Or, maybe, to paraphrase Joan Rivers, "Only a Father". Yay, that`s me.
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