I think we should pull a “sea kittens” and rename the clear, drippy problem “nose tears”, as opposed to the completely different multicolored, chunky menace known as snot or boogers. As a person whose nose cries in cold weather and in pollen season, I endorse the use of a bandanna for the former, but not the latter. No chunks are allowed back in my pocket.
I always have a tissues in my bag and tissues available in my house. Here they give away little packets of tissues like they were candy, with the bag printed with some kind of advertising. I never have to pay for them as I don’t go through them fast enough to run out. Right now, in my bad, is a little bag of tissues advertising a new cell phone rate plan. In my desk are tissues advertising a particular bank.
The paper tissues are for wiping my nose (or, on rare occasions, my bum if the public restroom is out of paper). I carry a handkerchief only for drying my hands. As CalMeacham noted, it would be considered incredibly disgusting by my coworkers if I used aforementioned handkerchief for anything other than hand-drying.
Unless you actually don’t like having the skin rubbed off your nose and forming scabs. And I never use a tissue only once—there’s at least three good uses in every one, and more in a pinch.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Which reminds me: When I went to A-Kon 14 or 15 (anime convention in Dallas, a few years back), there was another anime convention that was handing out free packs of tissues advertising their anime con.
Hrm… Pocket packs of tissues advertising an anime con? Sure, it’s likely they’re just trying to help out with the inevitable outbreak of Con Crud (as anyone who has ever been in Basic Training knows, if you get a bunch of people from different places, and cram them into a room together for extended periods of time, everybody gets at least a cold), but the gutter brain in me takes this a whole other place.
Ewwwwwww.
I have a box of Puff Plus that are wonderful on my nose. I use a paper towel in the morning when I don’t feel like going downstairs for my tissue box. Paper Towels may be absorbent but the wetness goes right through them as opposed to my Puffs.
I always use tissues when out or at work, but if I’m home sick with a bad cold out comes the handkerchief. I have also been known to put my hankie under my pillow at night so I don’t lose it and have to root around in the dark.
I’ve never owned a handkerchief; as a lifelong reader, I’ve run across plenty of people in novels who “donate” their handkerchief to people who “ruin” it with too much snot…
Which makes sense to me. If I have a cold or an allergy attack (I’m not sure what I’m allergic to but I get textbook “allergy attacks” a few times a year…in reaction to things I’ve never bothered getting tested for) I stock up on Puffs Plus. Precisely because nothing is more revolting than blowing your nose into an already-damp facial tissue/handkerchief/piece of toilet paper etc…
The tissue isn’t absorbent enough to solve the problem and then you’re also grossing yourself out. I don’t like snot, whether it’s mine or somebody else’s. Ewww.
Get me a new one!
So unless I have a stack of handkerchiefs readily available to me (which has obviously never happened) I am going with My Puffs Plus with lotion. Soft, clean, sanitary, and very kind to my nasal tissues.
In the case of allergy attacks–or an old-fashioned attack of sneezes–I am forced to use whatever’s handy. Because I work at a bar, “whatever’s handy” is usually cheap thin dry cocktail napkins. Ouch, those things hurt after awhile.
You can pry my Puffs Plus out of my cold dead hands.
And you can keep your handkerchiefs.