Pick Your Friends, Not Your Nose

circa
I'll tell you what I'm sick of seeing. I'm sick of seeing news items designed to divide entire populations on behalf of special interest groups. I'm sick of seeing spoiled celebrities being heralded and looked up to by children and teenagers. Mostly, I'm sick seeing people pick their noses, and worse, actually eating the what they harvest.

I witnessed a grown man, just this morning, pick his nose while he was turning left at the intersection. Who knows what happened after that. Probably he made it to work and shook the hands of his co-workers who also picked their noses on their way to work, like touching crusty spoons together at a buffet.

That phrase, 'pick(ing) (your/her/his/their/my/our) nose(s)' is hilarious, though. I understand that it's like using your finger as a pickaxe to release mucus cakes trapped by your nose hairs, supposedly giving us the verb 'pick'. But, why isn't it called digging your nose, or shoveling your mucus, or the naso-phalangeal blunt extraction method? I'll tell you the real reason why.

Doctors and researchers have spent centuries observing the emotional health of the human nose. They've found that 70% of noses surveyed over the past 300 years have reported feeling vulnerable and insecure. No one knows why, but they've found that a complication of this problem is the more symptomatic the nose, the more damage its owner causes by enabling the insecurity by giving it the unhealthy amount of attention it seeks. Thus, scientists and medical professionals have always said to not pick your nose, meaning, if you're going to pay most attention to one part of your body, you shouldn't pick your nose to be it. And don't eat it if you do.

This has lead to a lot of pushback ever since. The more people in authority told John Q. Public to stop picking his nose, the more people did the opposite, going so far as to give in to their noses' urge to be aggressively scratched or manually emptied, instead of using the wind-tunnel method. This is where the common misconception of using your finger like a pickaxe is the reason we say 'pick' when it comes to getting that booger sugar. Which you shouldnt eat.

Don't ignore your nose, though. Take it out one breezy evening, and have a personal discussion with it. Ask it how it's doing, and truly listen when it starts to describe how it's been feeling, lately. You'll be grateful you did, in the long run, because your nose is like a spouse: it's going to be with you for a long, long time if you work on your relationship, and you need to stay committed even when it gets older and starts to wrinkle and sag. You might finish your evening together with a gentle scratch (on the outside) and a reassurance, saying, "Nose, you know I'll pick you whenever you really need it, right?" Just make sure you don't eat what comes off the scratch.

That's the key. I'm sick of seeing children and adults enabling their noses by perverting nasal maintenance, but that doesn't mean you should neglect your nose, either. Find a balance. Just don't find it using your finger.

And don't eat it.

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