Digging for Gold

Disclaimer:  This post is a little more vulgar than my normal posts, but the conversation was so funny that I felt it needed to be shared anyway.

            There are some conversations that I have with my husband that really make me wonder whether I want to create a child with half of his gene pool.  The other day, as we were on a long car ride, just such a dialogue occurred.  The topic was nose picking.  My husband was recounting a delightful little tale about one of the lacrosse campers that he had worked with earlier in the week and the child’s proclivity for plunging his finger into his nasal cavity and eating any contents that were retrieved.  While I found this disgusting, it was far from the most nauseating story that my husband had ever told me and frankly, as a teacher, this was a youthful practice with which I was all too familiar. 

            However, then my husband innocently remarked that he had occasionally tasted his own nasal debris as a child.  He even defined the taste as slightly salty.  When he realized that I was no longer speaking and had a frozen fixed stare of complete and utter revulsion on my face, he quickly explained that this was an activity that he engaged in when he was only five or six years old, definitely not seven or eight.  As if that made a difference!  “What?  Didn’t you ever eat your boogers?” he inquired, as if this practice was commonplace among all children.  “No! I will concede to the occasional nose pick, but I never once had the urge to discover what the gooey things tasted like,” I replied.  “I can’t believe that you ate enough boogers to remember the flavor!” 

            This man, whom I had kissed on more than one occasion, was now nonchalantly proclaiming that through those lips he had voluntarily ingested the same items that our body hopes to rid itself of through sneezes and nose-blowing. I thought I was going to be sick.  Were we seriously talking about procreating?  I was no longer certain that I wanted the gene for nose scavenging and consuming to be passed along to future generations, especially my own.  I was pretty sure it had to be chromosomal because our taste buds were surely something that got donated by our parents, although I don’t think that either of my parents would claim to have anything to do with my vegetarianism.  I did not want to take the chance that the propensity for “digging for gold” was a recessive trait or only appeared on the Y chromosome. 

             I could barely look at my husband without feeling ill.  Rationally, I knew that more than a few little kids picked their nose and ate it, but did my husband really have to be one of those, let alone one of those who thought it was o.k?  I also realized that this was, thankfully, not a trait that he currently possessed or otherwise I’m sure our relationship would not have progressed this far.  Nevertheless, the words “sperm donor” did briefly flashed before my eyes as I imagined my poor, socially awkward child, standing alone on the playground, enjoying the pleasures of his proboscis, while other kids pointed at him from afar. 

            On the other hand, I was glad that we had this conversation before we had children. In the event that my child was one of “those” kids, at least I could be somewhat mentally prepared and maybe even develop some sort of small talk about the nastiness of the habit and preempt the entire phase from even occurring.  However, I now feel like we need to take a few more long car rides together to determine if there are any other sordid habits from my husband’s past of which I need to be aware, not just for my sake, but also for the sake of our unborn children and their future attempts at happiness.