My nose is betraying me.
For much of my life, my nose and I have been the best of friends. It has served as dividing point for my face, both top and bottom and side to side. It has brought the aromas of grilled steak, freshly cut grass, and the perfume of a beautiful woman into my body. Oh, sure, there have been disagreements, and occasional fights. It still insists on letting its trashy, squatter blackhead friends stay over occasionally, despite my stern lectures to the contrary. And periodically it will wander into the business of others, although it knows nothing good ever comes of that. Overall, though, we’ve been mates, kindred spirits sharing a dream.
All that has ended. Arbitrarily, and without warning, my nose has decided to emit gigantihugenormously copious amounts of gunk from its nostrils.
My wife calls this phenomenon a “sinus infection.” She says I should go to the doctor. Witch. She’s just mocking me. There are two very good reasons I’m not going anywhere near the doctor for this so-called “sinus infection”:
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We have no money in our household budget for a doctor’s visit, because someone (and I’m not naming any names) continually insists on spending all our discretionary income on trips to McDonald’s and gallons of Mayfield Turtle Tracks ice cream.
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The last time I had some sinus trouble and went to the doctor, he showed no interest whatsoever in the two holes of my body where the trouble was located. Rather, he spent his time worried about another hole at the waaaay other end of my body that wasn’t leaking anything at all. He had barely gotten into the examination room before he was slipping on a latex glove and asking me about my prostate. Well, hell, I hadn’t seen my prostate lately; how was I supposed to know how it was doing? The next thing I knew, he was apparently trying to massage my sinuses via my back door (or, in scientific terms, the “wrong damn way”). I tried gently to point this out to him (“Hey, quack! That’s the wrong damn way to my sinuses!”) with no success.
So the doctor is right out. You would think my wife would realize this, since every time she mentions the doctor I shake the moths out of my wallet while simultaneously jamming my butt onto the floor – the internationally recognized symbols for “I have no money” and “please don’t stick your arm in my anus up to, and possibly past, the elbow.” But no. She keeps harping on this doctor thing. I think he’s paying her.
Meanwhile, my nose is cheerfully attempting to become the World’s Leading Provider of Multicolored Gunk[sup]TM[/sup]. Since the world really doesn’t need all that much gunk, when you stop to think about it, it would seem to me that a minimum amount of gunk would suffice to win this coveted title. But my nose is apparently taking nothing for granted. It probably figures that Saddam Hussein secretly could be working on a Nose of Mass Destruction (NMD) that could pump out gallons of gunk in a single hour, capable of covering UN inspectors or Kurds or someone in a mound of gunk before they realized what was happening. I agree that such a nose should be feared, but as I keep pointing out to my nose, we have no proof whatsoever that Hussein is doing that. True, there were some suspicious gunk-colored mounds in some of the satellite photos that Colin Powell showed the U.N. a few days ago, but that was probably sand or stockpiles of radioactive material or something equally negligible. I seriously doubt it was nose-gunk.
This makes no nevermind to my nose. It always was a hard-charger, determined to be the best. If the possibility exists that a madman like Hussein could be creating an NMD, then the theory of mutually-assured gunkiness means we have to create an NMD that would dwarf his.
I thought nose spray might help, as a punitive measure if nothing else. Usually my nose, if it’s acting recalcitrantly, will shape right up with the application of a squirt or two of nose spray. It realizes it’s been bad, and stops the improper behavior – sort of like swatting a puppy with a rolled-up newspaper. But apparently nose spray is a necessary ingredient in the process of gunk production. My nose takes the spray, applies cold fusion, and an hour later produces a truly stunning array of rainbow-colored gunk. And although I know I shouldn’t encourage it, I’m proud of the creative abilities of my nose. Occasionally I have been tempted to call the neighbors over to see the pretty colors. My wife has thus far dissuaded me from doing so, once with a loaded gun. “By God, I may have to live with your weirdness, but you’re not subjecting innocent people to it,” she said, brandishing the gun. Shrew.
So I’m forced to contemplate the betrayal of my nose alone. Obviously the gunk production must stop. I don’t want to be unnecessarily cruel, and I hope we can come to some sort of cessation of hostilities before long. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to bring out the “big guns.”
I have two photos to show my nose: Michael Jackson circa 1978 and Michael Jackson circa 2003. I pray I don’t have to use them.
