I have never picked my nose. Not once. I don’t dig and flick.
But…
I absolutely love yanking out nose hairs. I’ve been doing it since I was twenty-one. The first time I was just sitting around watching Jeopardy and I reached up to scratch that part of the face where mustaches grow (I know that place has a name, but damned if I know it) and I felt a tickle in my nose.
I had felt a big old nose hair. So I reached up and plucked it. When it came out I couldn’t believe the length. I rolled it around in my fingers, I laid it out on the coffee table, hell, I probably missed the Daily Double that episode. I was fascinated.
From then on I was hooked. Fourteen years later I’m still plucking schnoz hair. But, I’m not a psycho. I don’t stand in front of the mirror looking up and in. I do it all by feel. While watching television, I’ll just brush my fingers around the rim of my nostril. If I feel something, I yank. It’s tremendous fun.
A year or two after I first started doing this, I pulled my first white one. This was a magical moment in my life. Holy shit! This nose hair changed color! I had never seen a white one.
If you’re a longtime reader you know I had a predilection (great word to use if you want to sound smart) for yanking out white hairs on my cat as a child.
So, at twenty-two, I thought this white bastard was pretty cool. And then I freaked out. What else is going white? I ran to the bathroom.
My hair! My beautiful blonde hair! Thankfully it was still yellow. Now, I know I sound like a vain asshole, but please realize I had such low self-esteem at the time that my hair was the only thing I thought was worthy about me.
About five years later, I developed my first white chest hair. Now I have dozens of them. To be funny and gross, I will pluck them all and carefully place the bounty on my girlfriend’s toiletry bag (which is dark), and not say anything. She then gets to deal with that.
My head hair has still not produced any white ones. But it will happen. And one day I’ll probably lose a few of them, too. Lame!
I’m just glad that my whole sense of identity and self-esteem is not still wrapped up in my hair.
I just yanked out another nose hair, right after that sentence. It wasn’t white. Kind of clear. Bummer.
