children being children
A particularly good blog by Catherine Newman
Ironically, when I met Catherine Newman, whom I've been an avid fan of for years, I was asking her a question at the very same time my daughter was sliding a chewed piece of gum up her nose. And my question was some ridiculous feverish question, the only thing my breathless star-struck brain could churn out while I was thinking "Wow, I am asking a question of my current favorite writer!"
Luckily, the gum was relatively easy to remove. And I felt very tied to by daughter by her action. When I was 6 or so, I slid a tooth that had fallen out of my mouth up my nose, much to the consternation of my baby-sitter. That also was removed without a trip to the ER, and now this nose-object tendency has been passed on. And in one of those existential moments when you create your values by your actions, when I started laughing about the memory of my own nose problem, my daughter asked me why I was laughing, and I decided to take the risk (of her trying the nose trick with her tooth) to tell her the story of my young nose rather than dissemble some safer answer.