Nose picking and how that relates to my life.

When I was a student teacher in my PSI practicum I worked in a junior high for about 6 weeks.  Most of that time was spent observing our teacher associate and part of it was spent teaching a class of our own.  During my time observing, I learned techniques about how to manage a class and other things of that nature.  I also was bored at certain times because it's hard to watch someone else teach and not really have any part of their lesson.  Anyway, when you observe a class you learn things but you also see things, some things are forgotten pretty quickly and some are seared into your mind whether you want them to be or not.  This situation was one that I sort of wish I could forget, but I don't want to because despite the content of the story it works really well to tell high school kids during the respiration unit when you are talking about how the nose hairs and mucus filter the air.

I sat at the back of the class when I was observing.  Off to the left hand side and behind all the kids so they pretty much had no idea if I was looking at them or not.  One day, I was watching the class and I noticed something interesting.  A kid started looking around, kind of scoping out the room, looking like he was just making sure that nobody was looking so he could do something devious or something like that.  So I started watching him.  He reached up with his left hand, index finger out, and started digging in his left nostril.  I am talking DIGGING.  I really was certain that I may have to step in because I was certain that he would accidentally core to his brain and cause some serious damage if he went much further up there.  Now he dug for awhile and then reached up his thumb toward his index finger in a pinching gesture.  He started pulling. I gotta say this was a moment where time seemed to slow down as every detail unfolded itself in front of my eyes.  I must admit I had no idea what the teacher was talking about.  I was mesmerized by this kid.  So as the kid is starting to pull, out comes an elastic piece of snot that had one end stuck between his finger and thumb and one end firmly lodged in the interior of his nose.  Like the end in the nose had a grappling hook on it or something, because as he pulled, it kept stretching and stretching.  I am not making any of this up seriously.  This thing was stretched to at least a half an inch...

Let me pause for a moment.  All of us have picked our noses.  Even you dainty proper ladies out there.  You've done it in your car and other places, some of us more than others, but we have all done it.  We've all had an elastic one or two.  Now if you have picked your nose, which we all know we have, then you all know the unwritten rule of timing.  All of us get a feeling when we pick our nose when it's just been too long and we can't continue for risk of getting caught. We really don't want to get caught, and the length of time you have from the start of the pick to the end of the pick before it gets awkward varies from one situation to the next.  If you are in your car, then it doesn't matter about timing unless you are even with someone at the red light and so you do a little quick one, acting like you were just rubbing your nose or something.  If you are driving and you think no one else can see then you go to town until you get that sucker out of there.  If you are in a public place, same thing.  Quick one disguised as a rub.  If you are at home, not in the presence of your significant other, go to town.  In the presence, hopefully if you are not a rude pig, you don't just go to town, you do a little one, and then get a Kleenex.  Anyway you get my drift on the situational natural timing reflex of the pick.

Well as I said before, this kid has a frickin' elastic-grappling hook-anchored string of snot coming out of his nose and his situational natural timer went off because when he couldn't get it out, he just stuffed it right back up his nose.  Now I am loving and hating this.  It is my own private freak show and I'm looking around for someone to hit on the shoulder and say, "Man are you seeing this?!!"  Of course it's just me.  A university student supposed to be learning from an established veteran teacher about best classroom practice and all I can do is stare at a 7th grader picking his nose.  Well the kid waits for about 2 minutes (also a part of the timing mechanism, if you can't get it, there is an unwritten rule about waiting until you make another attempt so you don't draw too much attention to yourself)  then he starts going again.  He grips it quick this time and pulls that fricker back out again, 3/4 inch now.  The tension becomes too great and it snaps on to his index fingernail.  Dude, that was gross. Not done though.  Kid surveys the room, sees his window of opportunity, and jams that finger in his mouth and sucks it off his finger like he just finished some chicken wings or something.  I am not kidding you.  That was so gross and the kid had no idea that I had seen the whole thing.  I'm going mental in the back of the room and no one else saw it.  After the class was over I made the mistake of telling my teacher associate the story briefly and for some reason he did not find it as funny as I did.

Well, if you have read this blog, you know I am pretty much sick of being overweight.  I lost 3lbs last week and then this week I picked my nose. 

We all do things that we wouldn't do if we knew other people were watching.  I would do well during the day, eating healthy and all that jazz and then at night I would lose my marbles and eat some kind of crap that wasn't good for me, and tasted good but made me feel like garbage mentally and physically after. (Until I took a Zantac and then the physical garbage feeling left, leaving just the mental garbage feeling.)  Krista used to be my person who was watching me, and I felt too guilty to just eat like garbage all the time with her knowing.  Now it just isn't the same.  I mean, I get encouragement and people telling me all kinds of stuff, some people getting on my case a bit about eating well and stuff but really all those things don't mean a hill of beans to me.  Don't get me wrong PLEASE.  Some people have e-mailed me and encouraged me and it does mean a lot, it's just not the same as that one person who you love that when they give you positive feedback you feel like you could jump to the moon just to get a little more of that from them.  I wonder if I will ever have that in my life again.  The thing about it is, I don't have it and I can't use it as an excuse anymore.  I have used eating as an example but there are other things in my life that I am not proud of that I feel I can get away with because no one else is watching.  Some of the people who believe in God that may read this if they are bored may say, "Well remember, God can see those things."  That does not work as often for me as a motivating factor because God didn't vocalize disappointment like Krista or someone else I may have let down.  I know God sees all, and I believe there are consequences spiritually for poor decisions whether I think they will immediately affect someone else or not.  I guess I just don't care sometimes.  I want what I want, when I want and I am pretty good at justifying those things I feel I want.  I am justifying my nose picking basically.  Justifying those things that people would call me on if only they could see them when they were happening.

So here's the deal.  I am going to try and stop nose picking.  I want to be a man of integrity so that I can believe I am completing a task, not for someone else, but because it is right.  I wonder if I could do that.  I wonder how I would feel about myself after a couple of weeks of making the right decisions in areas where I seemingly always seem to make the wrong ones.  I think probably pretty frickin' satisfied on a ,"It feels good to do right even though it hasn't been easy" kind of level.  I am not talking about doing it all on my own.  I believe God supports people who ask, but I think he has provided me lots of support and I have just made the choice to pick my nose.  If I'm embarrassed when I get caught by another person, what do I really truly think about just diggin' away when I'm asking stuff from God.  Not really keeping my end of the bargain I guess. I need some better manners.  Figuratively of course.  Well, maybe literally too, but that is another post...

Anyway, I hope you have success in learning good better manners in whatever areas you are pickin' in your life.  I hope you didn't throw up if you read this...