zitI couldn’t have picked, although maybe I should have, a better day to wear green.  Green provides camouflage for certain substances.  Green makes it possible to accidentally blow a large chunk of booger on one’s shirt while laughing at a coworker’s funny story and have the nugget disappear into the sea of green on my chest.

“Ha ha haha..PHOOT..er…ohhh…” (where did whatever large object that just thrust out of my nostril go…oh, heh heh, it’s on your shirt, Nostrildamus)

That happened to me this morning.  While intentionally launching a nostril nugget in private can be unusually satisfying, accidentally performing the same task while engaged in conversation with another human being takes some of that satisfaction away.  Not all of it, I have to admit, but some of it.  And since I was wearing green when it happened, the satisfaction while momentarily removed from embarrassment quickly returned when I realized my coworker did not even notice the green slime embedded with force on my shirt.  I should wear a green shirt every day.

This was not the first time in my life that bodily substances suddenly excreted have been a potential source of embarrassment to me.  Let’s rewind back to my awkward teenage years, a time when pimples reared their ugly heads.  No one remembers me as a pimply faced kid or anything.  I wasn’t pimply faced, but now and then a gargantuan third eye would emerge, quickly growing to enormous proportions as it became engorged with creamy white pus, the pressure building quickly and threatening to burst with such force as to rival any volcanic eruption.  One such third eye appeared right in the middle of my nose the first morning of a trip I took with the high school youth group at the church my family attended, the type of trip where a boy just hopes to get lucky (noticed) by an object of his affection, maybe impress said object enough to get some smoochie face in the woods some time during that trip.

Two potential objects, Renee and Kelly, both blonde and cute had both been vying for my attention during the early stages of the trip.  And they both stopped to talk to me outside of the boys cabin that morning.  I was keenly aware of the protuberance exerting pressure at the end of my proboscis, tried to ignore it until Renee decided to point it out.

“Geez, Steve,” Renee pointed with a grin, “that sure is some large…”

POP!!!!

Mount Vestevius erupted violently — and on Renee.

I wonder if she would have noticed had she been wearing a white shirt?