Pick and Stick

In our house, we have rather strict rules.  The result of such rules naturally is exceedingly well-behaved children and healthy, fit parents.

There is a lot of nose-picking that goes on in our home.  I will not tell you the percentage of child picking vs parent picking.  I will let you take your best guess on that one.  There is no condemnation for the pick here, that is, if it is performed in accordance with some strict rules.  If the pick yields shall we say,"fruit," it is to be properly disposed of.  There is never to be wiping on or behind furniture, walls or any other place my hand my accidentally brush past it in the future.  If you must flick it, please make sure no one is in the line of fire.  If you are flicking in the car, be sure the window is down (although this one is not recommended as highly since the flick is not always a precise action;  it is not uncommon for me to look back in the car see a booger on the window nearest to my son that has been haphazardly flicked there).  Under no circumstances is the nose pick to be followed by a finger licking (in this case, we are so grateful to have a son that is horrified by unsanitary things.  In 4-1/2 years, eating boogers has never even occurred to his little mind.)

With all these rules in place, you can imagine my young son's fear of breaking one of them.  It has become common for him pick and then come to me to present his findings and wait for further instruction.  Usually he is running at me with a small pointer finger suspended in air or screaming at me from the back of the car.  In this case, I typically hand him a Kleenex (or toilet paper in our house) so he can dispose of the evidence.

But lately, as he is getting older, he has taken on this responsibility for himself.  He still shows me his treasures but then gets rid of them on his own (according to the strict rules, of course).  I've been impressed by this.  That is, until I was sitting on the toilet the other day and reached for the toilet paper.  My eyes stopped on a small, dark, flaky spot on the roll.  Ah ha!  Eli has been regularly wiping his boogers on the toilet paper roll, but in an attempt to conserve and not be wasteful (his mama is raising him to be sensitive to the environment), he has opted to not tear off a sheet and throw it away, but rather wipe on the outside of the roll and leave it to its luck.  So now we all have to constantly aware, lest we wipe boogers on our butts.  I should put up a sign in the bathroom to warn any guests:  Beware of Boogers.

Still, if I had to choose between a kid who wipes his boogers on my living room wall or one that tricks me into wiping my butt with one, I would choose the latter any day.  We have to keep up appearances, and boogers on the wall just say trashy (but luckily not the piles of laundry on the stairs or a mom who regularly can be seen wandering around in her pajamas at all hours of the day).

I'm including a picture of the wiper and one of the future wiper, just for good measure.