So, I was feeling pretty comfortable at home. I'm listening to some music, getting some work done and just you know doing stuff when the urge to pick my nose arises. The booger was kind of hard and dry from jogging this morning and was kind of aching me. I'm at my desk, completely tissue-less and I figured: "Eh, what the hell." And I go for it.

Of course, I completely forgot about the HOT PEPPERS that I just cut about 10 minutes ago to put into my scrambled eggs. My hands are on fire, but that's not enough of a warning to my brain and my gold-diggin' desires, Must... Pick... The... Nose... So I do. Consequences: The inside of my nose has been on FIRE for about 2 hours now. I took a shower, splashed some water on it and even used a moist towellette to relieve the pain. All to no avail, sadly.

All of these home remedies repeatedly remind me of two things: 1.) Eating 50% habenero "attempted suicide" buffalo wings during my fraternities rush and then rubbing my eyes with my fingers and 2.) Ms. Reeney my fourth grade school teacher who, through methods of humiliation, public shame and an unabashed pet-peevishnes about nose picking, cured me of my tevolo.

Story one really needs no explanation. I went to a fraternity rush event with the old heads. In an effort to show off, I ate about 20 'attempted suicide' wings made from 50% habenero sauce. You could smell them from accross the room they were so friggin hot. Well I forgot what I was laughing about, but I started to tear up, decided to WIPE MY EYES with my fingers and, consequently, cry for about two hours as I splashed cold water from the men's bathroom spigot onto my face and eyes. Very lovely.

Story two needs a bit of ellaboration and, like most good humor, some embellishment. As a young, good looking boy with the world before my doe-eyed peepers, I attended the Saint Barnabas Elementary School at 64th and Buist in fabulous Southwest Philadelphia for the first 6 years of my primary school education.

So, now that I'm older, I'll admint it: I was a picker. Nothing delighted me more than the pure unadulterated enjoyment of getting deep into my nose and excavating like a raider in the tombs of King Tut. I prided myself on my stealth, skill and prowess when it came to evacuating my nostrils. It was a gift, a talent that I nursed in secret and delighted in. Of course this is an embelishment, but essential for progression of the story line. I picked my nose and, well, didn't feel bad about doing it, that is until I had Mrs. Reeney. During my fourth year, I had the fabulous opporunity to experience public ridicule and embarassment at the hands of one Mrs. Reeney.

Mrs. Reeney was my only teacher for the entire 4th grade, with the exception of a gym class or two. She was a little bit older and part giant. She wore glasses, may or may not have been married and while she wasn't a Mrs. Pacifico, famed throughout southwest for her smarts and beauty, she wasn't particuarly ugly, and unlike Sister Getrude (whom I still believe to this day had to join the convent because her parents couldn't love a woman so ugly). She was a good math teacher. I remember counting stuff and doing division. Don't remember anything beyond that though, like science or grammer but I'm sure she taught me some of that stuff too. That's not what I remember Mrs. Reeney for. Mrs. Reeney will be immortalized in my life for her hatred of my exotic nose-picking lifestyle.

The first time I got caught by Mrs. Reeney was a chilly day in the late fall of '87. I had been sly until then using my ninja powers for good or ill, it did not matter. I was going in for a robust dig, it was mid-morning, cold and I was bored. However, I jumped the gun, dove right in without assuming that everyone else was as bored as I was when the shot rang out."

"Mr. Smith, would you like a tissue?"

"What the heck!" I thought to myself. "Why would I need a tissue. I'm just going to pick my nose here and wipe it under the desk. No big deal. Hey, why is everyone looking at me? And why am I starting to get red? Is this normal? What is happening to me? Why am I feeling this way?"

"No thank you," is actually how that thought sort of came out.

"Mr. Smith, I'm not sure you understand me. I believe you need to come up here to the front of the room and take a tissue so that you may blow your nose." She calmly sneered, eating up the fact that I was starting to turn into a cartoonish Yosemtie Sam with his copyrighted getting-so-mad-that-his-head-was-boiling-like-a-tea-kettle gag.

"Blow my nose! Jeez! You're going to let EVERYONE in the clss (including Bridget Mcguire *insert lion purring noises here*) that I've been picking my nose! Son of Gun! You evil harlot! (Of course I didn't know what the word harlot meant at the time, but if I did I would have said it. As my vocabulary would have been that of a 9 year old, you can substitue harlot for "poophead" or "stupidface") How could you make me red and get embarrased and make me go UP TO THE FRONT of the room to acknowledge, publicly, in front of the rest of the class that I was picking my nose. " I screamed internally. "And picking it well, I might add," I interjected as an aside.

"O.K." is actually what everyone else besides me heard say.

I get out of my stupid desk, go up to the stupid front of the room, look up at stupid Mrs. Reeney and her stupid smirk, take a stupid tissue from stupid Mrs. Reeney's stupid desk, notice stupid Bridget McGuire and her stupid cute has-braces giggle and harumph back into my stupid forth grade desk. I figure, "Hell, now that I've got the attention of the WHOLE ROOM, I might as well make the act of blowing my nose a production. Something to rival Thundercats, when Mumra emerges from his tomb and turns evil because his goons can't do anything right."

"Yeah! Do It!" I mistakenly tell myself. Oh and do it I do. I HONK on my nose. Literally, like that muppet character whose name I forget. I start honking and whooting and whooping it up. 4th grade shakespeare if you ask me. I decide to add some acting, throwing in some scratches and some picks as loud and obnoxious as I can until I am so rudely interupted by, deh-deh-deh... Mrs. Reeney.

"Mr. Smith, it seems like your having trouble blowing your nose. You know, Mr. Smith, you don't need to blow your nose like its a car horn. Haven't your Parents taught you how to properly blow your nose? Your theatrics, Mr. Smith, are ruining are discussion of 4th grade quantum physics (A.K.A- long division). Would you like a tutorial?"

Boy if that didn't shut me up quick.

"No." I say, while thinking to myself that she's threating me with the use of the word PARENTS. "I must be cool," I tell myself, "and remember this lesson for later. Maybe if I'm a teacher someday"

And remember it I do. Just like I remember that I was the only person she had to tell all year. 4 times.

So that brings me to the present and my current Tongan conundrum: The rampant nose-picking that goes on in my classes and how to handle it. Now, as awful as Mrs. Reeney was in pointing out my secret love by the end of the year she did cure me of my nose-picking ills. Even now, some 17 years later, I still can't pick my nose privately without feeling like a dirty monkey. I have to look around and hate myself for about two seconds while I'm doing it. She successfully sapped my love of the sport completely In retrospect, though, I think this is necessarily a bad thing, I mean picking your nose is not something that you want to pride yourself on, no matter what I used to believe.

This is one of those cultural things that I might not be able to get my head around and for the last two years, I've been pretty cool about it, but lately, it seems like there are two or three students that are just nose-picking anarchists. They don't respect the rules of the game like I did, they aren't bashful about their habits and they sure as hell don't care about tissues. It drives me crazy. Now do I call them onto the carpet in front of the class and start the hard, difficult process of breaking the nose picking habits of my students, or do I look away, try not understand and just sort of continue on with my life?

I find this whole nose-picking diatribe to be an excellent metaphor about how my Peace Corps Tonga experience has evolved and what my role as a facilitator is in this evolution I look back and reflect on the embarassment that I felt in Mrs. Reeney's class and how it sort of changed me and made me aware that other people didn't do this stuff and that, maybe, I was the one that was different and had to change. Of course calling up to the front of the class may have not been the best way for me to go about teaching me not to pick my nose, but being a teacher myself now, I have to admit that it had a parcel of simplistic genius to it. Mrs. Reeney didn't have to raise her voice, didn't have to get upset, interupt the class for very long or even reallly stop with the lesson. She made her point and, in just a few moments, really made me change myself. She did this, I guess, as a favor, but I also think that nose-picking was one of her pet peeves and she wanted it to stop. Well, she succeeded.

I look at my role here in Tonga, honestly, as a facilitator of change. I think that's really the point of the Peace Corps in the first place. To change things. And change is friggin' hard. It takes a lot of energy to do and it most definitely causes discomfort and maybe even embarrasment to the people that its happening to, but, like with Mrs. Reeney, sometimes its a necessary evil. I think of Tonga as sort of like a 4th grade me and me as the Mrs. Reeney. I've got to make the decisions, do I embarrass the student and start teaching them that picking their nose is wrong or do I just ignore it and keep on going with what I'm doing?

Its thiis kind of a decision that have I make each and everyday in some small way that makes my Peace Corps experience what it is. I've been here almost two years now and the only thing that I know anymore is that I'm not sure what the right answer for this really is.

Alright. I feel better now. Sorry for the half-assed post earlier.

Misi E? Io! 1 comments - Post a Comment

• you crack me up..stupidface
  
  A. Nancy
  # posted by Anonymous : 10/13/2005 2:26 AM