Boogers

So the other day, as I was excavating quite a large specimen from the nose of my five month old, I started to wonder what it is about the boogers of our own children that makes it okay to pick them. I mean, aren't boogers the same in all noses... consisting of the same stuff, hiding in the same places? You don't see parents walking up to total strangers and saying, "Oh... it's a big one... almost got it, just look up... hold on... there! I got it for you. Do you want to see?"

Why then, do we so fearlessly attack the ones in our children's babies and toddlers (Sam has just demonstrated a near expert ability at picking his own nose, so I had to amend) noses? Perhaps it's out of a sense of duty. They can't after all, pick their noses themselves, and we all know how annoying it is to have something up there. We are only being altruistic, right? Doing for our children what they are unable to do for themselves.

Perhaps it is completely selfish... because boogers that we see in our children's noses are also seen by others. And no one wants their kids to be known as snot nose or booger face. We are protecting our reputations. We are parents capable of keeping our children clean and well picked, and no one will ever say anything different!

Perhaps it's just an unexplainable phenomenon of motherhood... similar to the tendency of monkeys to sit and groom one another. We pick, we clean, we scrap off, we wash. It is simply maternal instinct that sends us in to the inner recesses and cavities of our children braving dirt and slime, crust and, well, boogers. As a mother who has been known to pop a half chewed cookie in to my own mouth for lack of a better place to put it, I admit that when it comes right down to it, boogers are probably on the lower end of the list of disgusting things that mothers handle.

Happy picking, everyone.