Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Another nose cleared
I had intended to write a post tonight explaining that 2 Girls, 1 Cup is merely the natural heir to goatse.cx, and that with multimedia’s evolution, some day soon we will doubtless be treated to 1 Cup, 2 Girls, 3D, or its equivalent, but instead I was called into Urgent Care to pull a bead out of a two-year-old’s nose.
I tried to save my employers some money (they pay me overtime for “call-backs”) by telling the Urgent Care pediatrician to spray the child’s nose with a decongestant. With any luck, she’d blow it out, a smooth, shiny, pink projectile. Alas, my trick didn’t work this time, and the pediatrician asked me to come in.
I’m not sure I understand the affinity of toddler noses for smooth, shiny, brightly colored things, but it’s something akin to black holes and matter. The child sees this bead, this corn kernel, this Tic Tac, and thinks Must! Shove! Or perhaps it’s the pediatric version of Will It Blend? Call it: Will It Fit? (Hint: it always fits. It rarely comes out without my help.) In any case, children and beads make me happy because it’s easy overtime money: fast, low stress, inevitably successful.
Which leads me to wonder whether we have it all wrong, giving the kids in our office stickers of Tinkerbell, Dora the Explorer, or Batman. Perhaps they’d rather have something smooth, and shiny, and brightly colored.
D.
I don’t think I ever did the object-up-the-nose thing. My younger brother did – I think it was a navy bean. We all had to troop off to the base doctor’s office, which was in an arid green-brown building that looked like every other arid green-brown building you’ve ever seen on a military air base.
Being military doctors, they didn’t have to be nice. And they weren’t.
We weren’t all that nice, either, but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. We could have begged and wheedled, cajoled and bargained for an hour or two — she wasn’t going to let me near her nose. Or we could wrap her up in a sheet (“Just like a burrito!” I always announce joyfully), hold her down, and let me do my thing. Done in 30 seconds, and she’s all smiles. Think of all the tears we saved doing it that way.
I was speaking generally – Air Force doctors and dentists weren’t particularly pleasant most of the time, at least from what I remember. I had to get my ear syringed out – I was about 6, as I remember – and the doctor blasted uncomfortably hot water into my ear without telling me what was going to happen and then yelled at me when I flinched. The dentist apparently missed his spot with the novocaine and was very put out when I complained. That sort of thing.
Ugh. That’s what comes of servitude, I guess. I’ll bet they were overworked, too. (Aren’t I terrible? No sympathy for you, Dean, only for your doctors!)
My sister’s kid does objects up the nose. Fortunately neither of my boys did – they are much more oral. I wonder if it’s a younger sibling thing, since these days there are no qualified items (ah! choking hazard!) around with the first kid. But young siblings have access to their older sibs toys, which invariably have small parts.