To respond to Dewi’s comment on yesterday’s post: “Wrong”. And as a quick aside before I start, I’m impressed (or dismayed, perhaps disgusted) to realise that this is not the first post on this blog to be tagged with the word “snot”. Get in there.
Well, I did say I wanted to encourage my imagination and yesterday I had the chance to do so. In the best of circumstances, to whit: winding up a 6 year old. Always fun, especially when they believe everything you tell them. Sadly, on this occasion, I faced resistance but I ploughed on regardless much to the unease of those around me, I’m sure.
Let me set you a scene… small boy and father getting changed after going swimming. Small boy has a runny nose and the first thing to hand is a pair of underpants. I am thankful to say they were his underpants, and not Dad’s. Especially as his instinctive reaction was to wipe them across his nose and drag out a lovely, shiny, watery bogey which quickly soaked into the elasticated band.
“Ooh, you shouldn’t do that,” I warned, “You’ll give your bottom a cold.”
He stopped and looked at me, head cocked to one side as if trying to judge if I was telling him the truth or not. He quickly made up his mind. “No it won’t!”
“It will,” I insisted. “You know when you pump? That’s your bum sneezing.”
“No, it’s not!”
“Really, it is. You know how girls don’t use handkerchiefs like boys do? What do you think they use instead? Spare underwear. That’s why girls smell so bad. Mummy’s always pumping isn’t she?”
“Yes, but…”
“So there you go. Bottom cold. And you want to make sure you don’t get a really bad one, because then you’ll do really big bottom sneezes and it won’t be bogies that come out…”
At this point, I was getting some really strange looks from a family sat nearby and was getting concerned that we’d be banned from the pool. In the tradition of Sun reporters of your, I made my excuses and left.
Ensuring that my own undercrackers were nose-drip free.
P.S. I hope you all appreciate the fact that I spent ten minutes staring at pictures of dribbling noses before picking one (erm…) that suited this article.
