Pick and Mix

He always seemed to have his finger up his nose.

Even as a small child I can only ever remember him with his finger up there.

Not just a casual one fingered exploration but a whole hearted obsession as though he was looking for something, a vague memory of something casually inserted and then long lost up his left nostril.

His parents would cry out in despair at the first indication of a digital probing.

They would invoke all of the best cliches from 'The Book of Parental Cliches' and in the chapter on the active discouragement of nose picking there were plenty to choose from. An everyday one was 'get your finger out or you'll not want your tea'. A further one, on a scare tactic basis was 'stop that or your brain will fall out'. If the threat of not being provided with a regular meal or a Dr Who type prospect of cerebral loss was not sufficient then there was always the stalwart of ' if the wind changes your finger will get stuck up there'.

None of these attempts at shaming or intimidation showed any success in curtailing the nose picking habit over his formative years up to the age of four. On the rare occasions that the nasal passage was free of his finger there was always trouble. He was always very, very snotty. When the mucus was not actually conglomerated between nose and top lip it was collected in a sticky mass between elbow and sleeve cuff. His mother tried all manner of biological and non-bio wash powders and detergents to lift and dissolve the horrible residue but nothing could shift it, not even resorting to a good old fashioned boil wash in her best saucepan on the gas cooker top.

The arm sweeping motion of nose wiping across his face became a source of great mimickry and amusement by those in his pre-school days. Small children can be very cruel when such an obvious characteristic of a classmate can be capitalised upon. Unfortunately, even the teaching staff picked up on his tendency and one of his tutors narrowly avoided referring to him as the snotty boy at a parents evening when face to face with his parents.

By the time the boy reached an age to attend the local Infants School he was more likely to be kept at home than run the gauntlet of name calling and bullying. It was a miserable existence for the boy and his family. There was talk of attending a Therapist who could devise alternative strategies to picking the nose. If a large fund could be raised there was even a six week Snot Camp option in the United States where tough love, periodic restraint of the active finger and chemical based treatments were avocated with some success according to independent research by leading authorities in their field. The thought of organising a Charitable Fund Raiser for something with such a social stigma attached to it was nightmarish on its own.

The boy was not deterred from his one fingered exploits. Soon the family came to accept that if the house was calm and quiet then it was because the boy was happily engaged in picking his nose.

Some years later when it was time to attend Senior School the boy was assisited by being one of a very large number of students and could enjoy reasonable anonymity. The runny noses and adenoidal problems began to give cause for concern amongst his parents. These factors and the onset of puberty resulted in the boy resembling a large, mobile and squeaky voiced organic blob, especially around the facial area where everything was either dripping, seeping or erupting.

The School medical officer, an avid viewer of TV programmes on embarassing bodies and teenage complaints, adopted the boy as a project and a challenge. Under regular observation as a guinea pig for bacteriological wipes, face washes and ointments there were miraculous results in complexion and skin texture. It was just the nasal area that continued to give problems.

Under consultation with the boys General Practitioner it was proposed that a medical operation simultaneously on adenoids and tonsils would go a long way to eliminating the irritations of the nasal passage' It was hoped that this would  give the boy the confidence to stop his nose picking habit for good. That would serve him well as he entered the adult world.

The procedures went well. The boy was recuperating splendidly. The Surgeon was completely satisfied and predicted great things in terms of ease of respiration and clarity of voice.

On the morning of being discharged from the hospital a final X-Ray was taken to give an indication of how the tissues and membranes were settling down in the nasal passage. A slight abnormality was noticed in the left passage which had not shown up before. At first it was thought to be a scar from the operation but the shape, profile and density of the object was not compatible with mere bruising or abrasion.

In an out-patient procedure a probe was manouevred up into the nose, a clever piece of equipment with a telescopic claw which could be manipulated to enclose, grip and then extract various sizes of obstruction from the main bodily orifices.

To the surprise of all attending the small retractable device retrieved a smooth edged reddish tinted pebble. The boys parents gasped. They recognised the hue and shape of the pebble from an area of loose dressed yard in the house that they had occupied when first married and had vacated when the boy was about 2 years old.

Everything now became very clear.

As a toddler the pebbles will have formed a fascination to an inquisitive mind. They could be picked up and discarded in a wonderful clattering sound like a heavy shower , loaded into toy cars, shaken in a Tommy Tippee cup like maracas. Best of all one of them could be carefully inserted into the left nasal opening, pushed hard up as far as it could go and then as a source of comfort and reassurance, of a fonder time,to be regularly felt and appreciated by a probing finger whenever there was an urge to do so.