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February 13, 2007

Blowout.

Even after it made a slight resurgence yesterday, I think I'm finally getting over my cold. At least, I hope I am. I'm supposed to fly to Edmonton tomorrow and carve my snow sculpture on Thursday and Friday for the Silver Skate Festival. Carving with a cold is not much fun.

Warning: Some readers might find the rest of this entry to be rather...gross.

On the bright side, my sinuses felt pretty clear this morning, except for a chunk, way back in my right nostril. I tried to blow it out when I woke up, but it just didn't want to move. I had my breakfast and helped out as Fawn got ready for work and Jade got ready for daycare, regularly blowing my nose. Finally, I felt the booger ball come a little bit loose. With luck, I'd be able to dislodge and blow it out without also blowing out my eardrums, something that's happened more than a few times since I've had this cold.

Wanting to be rid of the nasal annoyance, I grabbed a new facial tissue and brought it to my face. As an extra precaution, I put an index finger into my left ear, to help keep my ear from blowing out.

Gently, I blew.

The booger ball rushed out of my nose and shot through the facial tissue, where it bounced off my chest and fell onto the floor.

I knew there was something odd about this booger ball from the moment it bounced off my chest. For one thing, booger balls do not bounce off chests. They stick to them. For another, it left no mark. Booger balls always leave some sign of their passing. Finally, the force of the booger ball, when it bounced off my chest, indicated that it was somewhat denser than your average booger ball.

I looked down at the carpet and at the booger ball and thought, "Wow! That's a really bright yellow!"

I bent over and picked it up with the facial tissue. It was firm beneath the Kleenex. Turning it over, I saw that I hadn't blown a booger ball out of my nose at all. It was a full piece of formerly frozen corn, clean and bright and looking like it had just been thawed out of the package.

Now, this raised several questions in my mind.
  1. How did a full piece of formerly frozen corn get into my nose?
  2. When did this full piece of formerly frozen corn get into my nose? I've had corn with at least one meal a day for the past three days, but at no time do I remember inserting a piece of corn into the dark recesses of my nasal cavities.
  3. What if it had sprouted?
  4. What else is in there?
On one hand, I marvel that my body was able to preserve and hide a whole piece of corn from me. On the other, I find it really frightening to think that my body was able to preserve and hide a whole piece of corn from me. But I suppose things could have been worse.

It might have been a grape.

4 comments:

Peter Tyrrell said...

Corn. Corn? Corn... Corn!

You should consider yourself lucky, to be able to produce nutritious morsels on demand like that. Which nostril is it that has become the (a-ha, a-ha) cornucopia?

Anonymous said...

Michael....you're crazy! You really don't remember inhaling corn? Your cold has obviously gone to your head!

Good luck in Edmonton. Can't wait to see photos of your sculpture.

Meandering Michael said...

Peter: The right nostril. I can't do it on demand, though. I was a-maize-d that any corn came out at all!

Mom: Thanks! Hopefully the sculpture and the pictures turn out. I should have the pictures up on Saturday night, assuming I don't go to some wild snow-sculptor party afterwards.

dogsled_stacie said...

Ewww... WHY did I read that after the warning??! Glad it was corn instead of what you thought it was though.