Knowledge November - Day 11 - Disgusting Dilemmas

I've read via several sources that a lung specialist in Innsbruck, Austria, believes that nose-pickers are generally healthier, happier and most likely to be better in tune with their bodies than non-nose-pickers.

Dr Friedrich Bischinger believes that society should encourage children to nose-pick-and-eat. "It's a great way of strengthening the body's immune system. Medically it makes sense and it's a perfectly natural thing to do."

Well, if it prevents cancer, heart attacks and AIDS, I'm all for it. I think......

Many many bloggings ago, I previously admitted to blowing my nose in the shower as one of my regular, bad habits. It clears everything out, saves on tissues and makes my groggy sleep-laden head feel about a kilogram lighter. That's right, I'm not ashamed of this daily spring-clean of the sinuses. However, I do not pick it out with my digits or eat it.

In my reception year, I remember seeing the object of my (somewhat misguided) affection, Matthew, sitting directly in front of me in the school Activity Room. We were at an assembly, held inside because of the rain, and Matthew was mostly focussed on the inner recesses of his nasal cavity as opposed anything our deputy principal Mr Miller had to say.

Sadly, I found his actions fascinating - I was only five-and-a-half, after all. Then, after surveying the glistening green globule on his index finger, he put it into his mouth. There were conflicting feelings of revulsion and fascination swirling within me as I saw the look of preoccupied enjoyment on his face. Perhaps I should have a go as well, I thought. And so I did. It didn't take me long to find something worth picking out, and I sucked it from my finger.

Bleccccch, it was salty, tiny and horrible. Even now, goosebumps are springing up on my arms and my scalp as I write this.... Any early stages of a crush for Matthew disappeared quicker than mum's chocolate crackles at a birthday party. How on earth could he do that?

Thirty six years later I still haven't worked out the answer to that particular question, and if I saw Matthew again (his parents still know my parents), it would take me at least six glasses of sparkling shiraz and a handful of funny mushrooms before I'd dare bring it up.

What I do know is that, mostly, the pick-and-eat debacle showed me at a very young and impressionable stage in my life that if something seems different but also disgusting, avoid it.

'Disgusting' is normally a pretty strong indicator that it's best to stay away. Key examples of this have included:

• Eating a bowlful of melted copha, icing sugar and cocoa powder. Mum had been in the procss of making up some chocolate crackles but for some reason went outside, distracted by something Dad was making in the shed. The first few mouthfuls tasted like heaven, the other 27 were disgusting. As were my pale pink-turned-bile-brown bed sheets, blankets, pillow, hair, teddy=-dog and face later on that night.....

• Trying Philippa's Dad's roll-your-own smokes during a sleepover when I was 13 - It was OK when Philippa tolerated me 'bum sucking' the first ten whilst we squinted at a section of the Rocky Horror Picture Show on the driveway screen visible from her bedroom window but thene then she insisted that I do the 'drawback' and suck the smoke in. Soon after ,'Sweet Transvestite' wasn't how I was feeling when the room began to spin and there was only the hood of my sleeping bag to unload in....

• Riding the 'whizzy' in the caravan park playground for a full half-hour before setting off on a 450km drive with my family - I was not alone in this episode of stupidity. My two brothers were with me as well. All three of us continued to sit there, grunting out smart stuff like, "I feel a bit woozy now," but not having the sense to get off. We hadn't even driven 10 kilometres through Coff's Harbor's banana farms before the sick cartons at the back of the landcruiser were full. Dave's even sloshed over a tiny bit and splashed the speaker in the door. Dad was not happy.

• Being served a home made steak-and-kidney pie by my boyfriend's mother the very first time I had met them and had a meal over at their house. I somehow ate it by cutting it into very small pieces and swallowing them whole (washed down with his Dad's throat-burning home-made wine). The evening got worse when I went to the toilet which was adjacent to the living room and in order to avoid making any discernible noises (the brick veneer walls were paper thin), I leaned forward on the seat to enable my yellow essence to roll quietly down the inside of the bowl. Not that night - somehow my spraying action was stronger than I anticipated and the wee shot up the edge, under the seat and started pooling onto the tiled floor at the base. This resulted in ten minutes of me mouthing OH SHIT to myself (ah the irony) and oh-so-silently mopping up the mess with toilet paper whilst trying not to retch from the smell or have the kidneys return up from whence they came from the constant bending over.

There you have it: just a few things that seemed sort of digusting at first and remained disgusting. Go with your first impressions always.

So, don't pick your nose and eat it. I'm betting that this Dr Friedrich Bischinger was a tubby guy with a lazy eye who ate sunday school paste. He may have a stronger immune system, but I betting also that his little black book isn't exactly bursting at the seams.