Once upon a time, when Papa was just a little boy,
he always found himself getting in trouble, usually in relation to some joke or stunt he was pulling, because it was funny, or he thought it was funny at the time. And yes, his Mama actually did often say: "You think it is all funny now, until someone gets their eye poked out!" It seems to be something that Mamas say. Whether it was jumping his bike over pits or falling onto trashcans, or poking his bottom through a window (to feel that very scar to this day whenever he sits down), there was always some mayhem ready to leap forward, always waiting just around the corner. When he was very little, while goofing off, he almost killed himself when he accidentally swallowed a "vitamin pill" and had it lodge in his throat. After that, you would think he would learn.
But one day, when he was about seven years of age (and age you would think he might know better) while joking around with his sisters, he stuck a bean in his nostril. Just a dried bean, probably a pinto bean, and it was pretty funny, having a bean stick out of your nose; however, when he went to pull it out and pretend to eat it, his finger pushed the hard little bean further up his nostril. Then when he went to extricate it, this time more carefully, his finger pushed the bean further up his nose. So he decided to blow it out, which might even be funnier! However again, when he inhaled, he sniffed the bean far up his nose, so that it lodged painfully and blocked the air in that passage.Mama was summoned. Mama employed a tissue, and had Dougie BLOW. But nothing. The bean was far up his nose. He was already having visions of a lusty bean plant growing in his head, the roots going up into his brain, the leafy foliage extending from his nose. Wouldn't that make him popular at school?Mama attempted to extricate the bean with a Q-tip, but it was a no-go. Nothing seemed to work. And Dougie was getting more and more afraid.What kind of joke was THAT, anyway? Sticking a bean up your nose? Would he never learn? No......WOULD HE NEVER LEARN?!Soon Dada was having a go, retrying both the tissue and the Q-tip, but experiencing no more success than Mama. Then Dada brought out the big guns, a flashlight and a pair of tweezers. With Mama directing the flashlight up Dougie's nose, Dada jammed the tweezers up and grabbed and gripped, twisted and turned, pried and yanked, levered and stabbed.If anything, the bean was working its way further up into the great cavern of Dougie's head. "WHY DID YOU STICK A BEAN UP YOUR NOSE!" Dada wanted to know, but thankfully he was so busy enacting his lifelong job of performing surgery, he forgot to spank Dougie.Mama would say that having a bean stuck up your nose was fairly good punishment. But Dada would have his doubts. Years before the whack on the back had produced the vitamin-pearl just fine. Perhaps a good whack might produce the bean?To his credit, Dada did not give up. He kept working at the bean, attempting to get as side of the tweezer on either side of the bean.This was not without some pain. Or tears on Dougie's part. He pretty much remembered vivid red light, and his nose stretching in awful ways that generally noses don't move. And after about an hour of this prodding and prying and yanking and yelling, Dada slowly extracted the bean, which had become quite moist and warm. No one tested it, but apparently the bean had been quite cooked up inside Dougie's nose.Dougie never got anything stuck up there again, at least not in his nose. But within a year Dada would again employ the tweezers to get some foreign object out of Dougie's ear (and if possible, that ear surgery was more painful than even sniffing the bean).All Stories © 2009 Douglas Christian Larsen
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